AIADMK gives Annamalai what he wanted, severs ties with NDA

At a closed door meeting in March this year, K Annamalai told his party leaders that he would step aside as the chief of BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit if the Central leadership decided to continue the alliance with the AIADMK for the 2024 polls. He had argued the alliance won’t augur well for the BJP in the long run.  

Annamalai will be a happy man, today, though AIADMK walking out of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will have serious repercussions for the alliance as it is the largest party with nearly 35 per cent vote share. He is believed to have told the Central leadership  that the BJP should go it alone in the forthcoming elections in Tamil Nadu, without an alliance with Dravidian parties for people to take “seriously” its stand on corruption, nepotism, and good governance.

The BJP backed Annamalai to the hilt and decided to give him the freedom to run the state unit as he wished after ignoring complaints against his speeches and attitude vis-à-vis alliance partners made by the AIADMK top brass. 

No doubt, the BJP is still a marginal player in Tamil Nadu – it polled 5 per cent votes in the 2022 elections to urban local bodies by going solo – but the party feels it has the potential to emerge as the alternative to DMK and AIADMK, and that Annamalai, a former Karnataka-cadre IPS officer, is the right choice to lead the party. 

Under Annamalai, BJP took to aggressive posturing, made no bones about its ambition to emerge as a ruling party in Tamil Nadu, and began to provoke AIADMK by declaring that it will expose its corruption too along with that of the DMK. Also, Annamalai comparing himself with J Jayalalithaa, whom he alluded to was “corrupt”, didn’t go well with the AIADMK leaders and cadres who always treated the BJP with suspicion. 

Even DMK allies kept warning AIADMK to be careful about its alliance with the BJP, which they said, was known to “gobbling up” regional parties after riding on their back by pointing to the decision of parties like Shiv Sena, Shironmani Akali Dal (SAD), and JD(U) which parted ways with the saffron party. 

With AIADMK’s exit, Annamalai can now keep both Dravidian parties on the same pedestal and call them corrupt but will face too many challenges in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. 

He may believe that his padayatra and consistent efforts by the BJP might have reversed the negative image that Narendra Modi has acquired in Tamil Nadu, but the Prime Minister has fared very poorly even in the opinion polls, trailing behind Rahul Gandhi by a huge percentage.

While AIADMK rebels like O Panneerselvam, T T V Dhinakaran, and V K Sasikala might be roped in to split the Mukulathor votes in southern Tamil Nadu, the BJP will have to burn the midnight oil to stitch a rainbow alliance like in 2014. It might use its influence as the ruling party to woo smaller parties but will have to do a lot of convincing to explain why the BJP alliance was better than the one led by AIADMK. 

Senior journalist R Bhagwan Singh told DH that the BJP and Annamalai are moving according to their plan of going solo in Tamil Nadu.  

“At a time when every party is trying to widen its network of allies at least to show some numbers, the AIADMK has walked out of an alliance with the BJP. This will give Annamalai enough room to hit out at the AIADMK on corruption and add credence to the BJP’s ‘Clean Up TN’ formula,” he told DH.