NEW DELHI: AIADMK general secretary and Tamil Nadu’s former CM Edappadi K Palaniswami reached Union home minister Amit Shah’s residence in New Delhi on Tuesday.
Palaniswami’s visit to Shah’s house comes at a time when rumours are rife that ex-allies may come together to fight assembly polls next year.
In September 2023, the AIADMK made a decisive break as it severed ties with the BJP, ending an alliance that had been riddled with tension. AIADMK leaders were reportedly frustrated with the BJP’s growing ambitions in Tamil Nadu and its leaders’ controversial remarks about Dravidian icons like Periyar.
With the 2024 Lok Sabha elections approaching, AIADMK announced it would go solo, determined to carve its own path without the BJP’s influence. But this wasn’t the first time their alliance had fallen apart.
In 2019, AIADMK, still recovering from the death of Jayalalithaa, joined hands with BJP to take on the rising DMK-Congress front. The results were disastrous—the alliance won just 1 seat, while the DMK swept Tamil Nadu. Despite the setback, AIADMK stuck with the BJP for the 2021 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, where they lost again, securing only 75 out of 234 seats. The BJP, a junior partner in the coalition, managed to scrape by with 4 seats.
The roots of their alliance go long back to 1998. Under Jayalalithaa’s leadership, AIADMK first joined forces with the BJP-led NDA. It was a successful experiment, bringing them 30 out of 39 seats in Tamil Nadu. But within a year, Jayalalithaa withdrew support, toppling Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government.
Since then, their relationship had been anything but steady. AIADMK kept shifting between alliances and independence, sometimes partnering with the BJP, sometimes choosing to stand alone.