Coalition woes for BJP? Shah says party to team up with AIADMK but EPS differs

Chennai: Tamil Nadu’s principal opposition party, the AIADMK, and its ally, the BJP, continue to contradict each other on the composition of the government led by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) if the coalition were to win the 2026 polls.

Hours after Union Home Minister Amit Shah was quoted as saying that the BJP will be part of the government, AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami reiterated on Saturday that his party will secure a majority on its own.

Shah’s statement comes in the midst of Palaniswami’s first phase of the election campaign across the western, northern, and central parts of Tamil Nadu, which has sparked a massive political row over the latter’s comments on the DMK dispensation using temple funds to construct and run colleges.

The comments drew a sharp reaction from Chief Minister M K Stalin, who accused Palaniswami of having become the “original voice” of the BJP and even outperforming its leaders, moving from being its “dubbing voice.”

In an interview with an English newspaper, Shah said the AIADMK-BJP alliance will win by a landslide and responded with a curt “yes” when asked whether his party will join the government. When reporters sought his reaction to Shah’s statement, Palaniswami said, “I have already made it clear that the AIADMK will form the government with a majority of its own.”

Though the two parties are sticking to their respective stands – Shah did mention that the alliance will form a coalition government during a press conference with Palaniswami on April 11 – senior leaders and functionaries of both parties say such contradictions among the key partners might lead to problems in the run-up to the elections.

The contradictory positions have created a visible strain in the alliance, though a battery of BJP leaders led by Tamil Nadu chief Nainar Nagendran joined Palaniswami in Coimbatore on July 7 when he launched the first phase of his state-wide tour.

Both Dravidian majors, the DMK and the AIADMK, have been averse to forming a coalition government, though they have always contested elections in an alliance, except on rare occasions.

A senior AIADMK leader told DH on the condition of anonymity that the BJP’s repeated assertions that the next government will be led by a coalition might be counterproductive for the alliance, since he believes the DMK will exploit the “contradiction” to the hilt.

“Already, we see a lot of state-level DMK functionaries asking the AIADMK to publicly announce it will be a coalition government. If the AIADMK and BJP speak in different voices on the issue, it might become fodder for the DMK alliance. We hope Amit Shah and EPS will sort out this issue very soon,” the leader said.

Though TN BJP leaders tried to pacify their AIADMK counterparts by maintaining that the alliance will form the government and that it won’t be a coalition dispensation, Shah’s repeated assertions have put them in a spot.

“We have to be very cautious. Unless the cadres of both parties trust each other on the ground, there is no way this alliance will click. There is a need to keep the AIADMK in good books in the interests of the alliance,” a BJP leader said.