For many years, alliance politics in Tamil Nadu has operated on a easy understanding. In different phrases, whereas smaller events supplied votes, cadres, caste calculations, and ideological legitimacy, the foremost Dravidian events maintained an nearly full monopoly on energy. This association persevered as a result of the system itself gave the impression to be everlasting.
Shifting on to the 2026 parliamentary elections. C Joseph Vijay-led TVK made a spectacular election debut and emerged victorious. And inside days of Vijay’s victory, the previous alliance construction started to disintegrate with alarming velocity and nearly sentimentally.
The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) on Thursday introduced that its MLA A Shahjahan will be a part of the Vijay cupboard. Congress has already entered authorities for the primary time in 59 years. Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) additionally joined the Vijay ministry by means of its MLA Vanni Arasu on Friday after lengthy deliberations. The CPI and CPI(M) will proceed to help the federal government from outdoors.
The ballot outcomes are politically stunning not solely as a result of Mr. Vijay fashioned the primary post-poll coalition authorities in Tamil Nadu in the course of the Dravidian period, but in addition as a result of an electoral turmoil left each the DMK and the AIADMK instantly seemingly remoted in a system they as soon as held close to full management.
Isolation of the Dravidian greats
And beneath the ethical rhetoric now rising from all sides lies a quieter, older query: Why did these allies wish to go away so rapidly? One reply could also be painfully easy. For nearly six a long time, neither the DMK nor the AIADMK might actually develop a tradition of significant power-sharing.
Allies campaigned, transferred votes, defended coalitions, and absorbed ideological contradictions. Nevertheless, ministerial powers, administrative affect, and long-term political development remained intently guarded by the Dravidian majors. Coalition companions usually functioned like tenants of different individuals’s politicians. Lots of them now appear to have determined that there’s little emotional cause to stay loyal to their previous landlords, even when a brand new one arrives.
Some Congressional leaders had been unusually candid about this. “The Congress management has been striving for energy for the previous 59 years,” All India Congress Committee (AICC) Tamil Nadu in-charge Girish Chodankar stated on Thursday, calling the get together’s transfer to affix the Vijay cupboard a “turning level” in Tamil Nadu politics. Congress chief Manickam Tagore was extra blunt: “Tamil Nadu is the one state the place we needed to sit outdoors after elections, regardless that we labored exhausting to win others.”
Tagore thus sought to elucidate the structural grievances that had been quietly increase among the many allies for many years. Due to this fact, the isolation of the DMK at present isn’t just an election challenge. It is a relationship.
Only a few weeks in the past, these similar events contested elections below the DMK-led Secular Progressive Alliance. They utilized the DMK’s organizational community, marketing campaign equipment, and sources. Nevertheless, inside days of the outcomes, a number of of them crossed over to retain the Vijay-led authorities. To many inside the DMK, the velocity felt brutal.
However the malaise was compounded by revelations that each the DMK and AIADMK had been independently exploring uncommon post-poll preparations to stop Mr. Vijay from coming to energy. What was as soon as dismissed as rumor step by step grew to become political truth by means of public statements, leaks, and sectarian accusations. The plan failed. However this experiment itself modified the politics of Tamil Nadu.
For the DMK, which had for years portrayed the AIADMK as merely an extension of the BJP, the reported behind-the-scenes conversations with its arch-rival have harm its ideological credibility. For former Prime Minister MK Stalin, who himself was traumatized by his personal electoral defeat, and who hardly ever, as a pacesetter, would lean towards a transfer that didn’t have some type of public legitimacy, the very concept of harboring such ideas mirrored the depth of his vulnerability inside his get together, his instant political circle, and his household.
AIADMK’s physique blow
For the AIADMK, the ballot outcomes had been even worse. The get together grew to become vertically divided.
The faction led by Edappadi Ok. Palaniswami (EPS) claims to be defending the get together’s rules and opposing the Vijay authorities. The insurgent faction, led by former ministers SP Velumani and C. Ve Shanmugam, accused the EPS of first searching for a pro-DMK authorities for itself earlier than altering path.
Then a second collapse occurred. The rebels supported Mr. Vijay in a vote of confidence and had been reportedly in talks to safe him a ministerial slot, hoping that he would enter the federal government. As a substitute, it looks as if Vijay has chosen a totally totally different path. It’s a coalition authorities centered across the Congress, IUML and VCK – events that can strengthen his secular picture and cut back accusations that the Bharatiya Janata Occasion is not directly coming into the federal government by means of the insurgent AIADMK.
The CPI(M) has brazenly warned that it’ll rethink its help to insurgent AIADMK MLAs if they’re accepted. VCK additionally requested for ensures. TVK in the end backed out of the insurgent choice.
For the insurgent AIADMK camp, the rejection was politically devastating. Their guess now dangers leaving them in limbo between two crumbling constructions: distrusted by the AIADMK in authority and supported by these nonetheless outdoors the TVK authorities in a vote of confidence.
There’s irony all through this transition. The DMK and AIADMK as soon as dismissed Vijay as politically immature, too cinematic and organizationally weak. However at present each events appear preoccupied with reacting to his victory moderately than shaping their very own post-election narratives.
Evidently even the calculation for “Delhi” shouldn’t be fastened. A number of AIADMK leaders secretly believed {that a} faction of rebels, lots of whom are thought of politically near the Bharatiya Janata Occasion management, might finally enter energy by means of the TVK and exert affect inside the new authorities. That route now seems to be blocked, at the very least briefly.
vijay authorities optics
As a substitute, Vijay selected to type a authorities with a broad secular coalition perspective, fastidiously preserving his personal ideological ambiguity. This won’t essentially stabilize the brand new coalition authorities.
The contradiction stays apparent. Congress, IUML and VCK took benefit of DMK’s electoral ecosystem and anti-TVK marketing campaign message to win many seats. Their induction into the Vijay cupboard comes with a level of transactional discomfort that even a few of their supporters admit privately. However politics usually punishes emotional assumptions extra rapidly than ethical contradictions.
What Tamil Nadu is at the moment witnessing isn’t just the rise of recent entrants, however the exhaustion of the previous system. The Dravidian main groups had been braced for defeat. What they most likely didn’t anticipate was how rapidly defeat would cut up the loyalties of these round them.
And that might in the end result in deeper adjustments in 2026. It is not simply that Vijay has gained energy, it is that the ecosystem round him has instantly develop into completely invisible.
