A Necessary Partner

NEARLY A DECADE ago when Amit Shah, then the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) presi­dent, laid out a roadmap for his party to cap­ture space in the Coromandel states, Tamil Nadu was crucial to the plan. The state eluded the party in terms of Lok Sabha seats but BJP won four constituencies in the 2021 state elections, making an entry into the Assembly after a gap of 20 years. A year be­fore the next Assembly polls in Tamil Nadu, Shah, now Union home minister, is leaving no stone unturned in the mission to topple Chief Minister MK Stalin’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)-led alliance.

Three days after a quiet 45-minute meeting with leaders of the All India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), DMK’s chief rival, at his residence in Delhi on March 25, Shah has been unambiguous in hinting at a possible alliance between the two parties for the state elections. He said at a conclave organised by a news channel that as far as Tamil Nadu was concerned, “our friends” in AIADMK and BJP leaders were talking and once a decision was reached, it would be made public. Earlier, in Rajya Sabha, Shah had said that a National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government would be formed in the state in 2026 and took on DMK, saying this would bring to an end corruption and the li­quor scam. AIADMK, however, has maintained silence on a po­tential alliance with BJP, saying the meeting was held to discuss issues concerning the people of the state. On the question of an alliance, AIADMK General Secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami said the party would talk to like-minded parties and make a deci­sion when elections neared.

BJP’s keenness on stitching up an alliance was evident when its state chief K Annamalai, who was fiercely opposed to a tie-up with AIADMK, said he was ready to work as a cadre and indi­cated that he would not come in the way of an alliance with the party. The IPS officer-turned-politician, whose position against AIADMK was one of the reasons cited by the Dravid­ian party for parting ways with BJP in September 2023, ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, softened his stance close on the heels of the meeting Shah had with Palaniswami, along with his other senior party colleagues SP Velumani, KP Munusamy, M Thambidurai and CV Shanmugam.

Annamalai’s leadership of the state party has been one of the thorny issues for AIADMK, the other being bringing back the party’s breakaway factions of former Chief Minister O Panneer­selvam, VK Sasikala, and TTV Dhinakaran of the Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK). While BJP would want them onboard an NDA alliance to reach out to the Thevar or Mukku­lathor community—comprising three OBC sub-castes: Kallar, Maravar and Agamudaiyar—Palaniswami has been averse to the idea of accommodating them. He would also not like to com­promise on the chief ministerial candidate’s position. The bot­tomline for both parties, however, is to ensure that the anti-DMK vote does not split. Both AIADMK and BJP, which had fought separately, had drawn a blank in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, with AIADMK even being pushed to third position in several seats. BJP managed to bag 11.24 per cent of votes contesting 23 seats against 3.62 per cent in 2019 when it had fought in five seats. Together with AIADMK, which got a vote share of 20.46 per cent, and other parties, it is seen to be a formidable alliance to take on the ruling DMK-led Secular Progressive Alliance (SPA) which is facing anti-incumbency and corruption charges.

AIADMK fears the arithmetic may go awry if Stalin manages to touch the emotional chord in the state with issues like Hindi and delimitation, both of which are directed against the BJP led Union government. Sources in AIADMK say an alliance with BJP, particularly in a state election, goes against the sentiments of a majority of its party cadre. After 2004, former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa or Amma, as she was called, had decided never again to enter into an alli­ance with the saffron party, according to them. After her death in 2016, AIADMK allied with BJP once for the 2019 Lok Sabha election when it won just one seat and then in the 2021 Assem­bly election which it lost.

At the same time, AIADMK is running out of options to fight the DMK-led alliance. Its tactics for 2024, when it snapped ties with BJP, also did not pay off. Party leaders are non-committal on the strategy for 2026. “Regarding alliance, the party will take a decision,” D Jayakumar, AIADMK leader and former minister told Open. Asked how the party plans to take on DMK, he said there is anti-incumbency and the party will go to the people and highlight its “unkept” promises, the law and order situation, taxes imposed, rise in prices of essential items like milk, the drug menace, and corruption charges.

It was Jayalalithaa who had made way for the entry of BJP into the state dominated by Dravidian politics. When AIADMK and BJP came together for the first time in the 1998 Lok Sabha elec­tions, it had raised several eyebrows. BJP won four of the 39 Lok Sabha seats, the highest ever in the state, which in the run-up to the elections had witnessed the Coimbatore blasts near the venue of BJP leader LK Advani’s rally. It did not take too long after government formation for Jayalalithaa’s relationship with the Vajpayee government at the Centre to sour as it did not give in to pressure to bail her out in corruption cases. Her rancour manifested in the famous tea party she hosted in 1999 where she invited Congress’ Sonia Gandhi. That same year, she withdrew support to the BJP government, causing its fall, by one vote. Since then, relations between the two sides have gone through good and bad times, as friends, enemies, allies and rivals. In 2004, after DMK walked out of NDA, BJP and AIADMK tied up for the Lok Sabha polls in which the M Karunanidhi-led party won all 39 seats. In 2009, AIADMK led a third front in alliance with PMK, MDMK and the Left, improving its tally to nine seats, though DMK, which led the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), won 17.

IN 2014, THE year Narendra Modi was BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, AIADMK for the first time fought all 39 seats. It won 37. Unpredictable as she was, Jayalalithaa had spurned BJP, although she had a cordial relationship with Modi. She had even attended his swearing-in ceremony as Gujarat chief minister in 2012, a year after Modi attended hers as Tamil Nadu chief minister in 2011. Ahead of the 2014 elec­tions, Advani had described her as a natural ally. Jayalalithaa, however, had stuck to her strategy of keeping distance from BJP and decided that AIADMK would go it alone. She did, however, back the Modi government in supporting certain legislations at a time when NDA did not have majority in Rajya Sabha. AIADMK, which tied up with the Left and smaller state parties, won the 2016 Assembly polls, giving her a second consecutive term as chief minister.

After Jayalalithaa, a towering personality articulate in Hindi and English who, along with her rival DMK founder Karunanidhi, had dominated the state’s politics for nearly two de­cades, AIADMK found itself on a weak wicket. On the other side, the DMK baton was seamlessly passed to Stalin after his father Karunanidhi’s death in 2018. The factionalism within AIADMK added to the party’s woes. In the 2021 Assembly polls, the first after Jayalalithaa’s death, the DMK-led SPA swept to power and Stalin took charge as chief minister. The alliance with AIAD­MK, however, paid off for BJP which made a return to the state Assembly after two decades, winning four of the 21 seats it contested in elections to the 234-member Assembly. BJP, as it happened, had also won four seats in alliance with DMK in the 2001 Assembly polls, when Jayalalithaa had led AIADMK to a landslide.

For BJP, still struggling to find its feet in the south barring Karnataka, the Tamil Nadu election is vital for showing a pan- India presence. As of now, the party is not in power in any southern state, except Andhra Pradesh, where it is an ally of N Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP). It would strive for an alliance with all anti-DMK parties, big and small, in Tamil Nadu. There has been speculation about AIADMK try­ing to tie up with actor-turned-politician Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK). Vijay, however, is reported to have put up the condition that he should be chief ministerial candidate for the first part of the term if the alliance won. Besides, Naam Tami­lar Katchi (NTK) coordinator S Seeman, a filmmaker-turned-politician who advocates Tamil nationalism, has said the party will fight the election alone. What is to be seen is whether these parties split the votes or if the state votes decisively for one of the two Dravidian parties which have governed it for six decades.

A year is a long way in politics. But the political heat has started rising in Tamil Nadu.

Amit ShahBJP-AIADMKEdappadi K PalaniswamiIndian politicsJ JayalalithaaPolitical allianceTamil Nadu