With the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) officially announcing a split from its alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Tamil Nadu, one thing has emerged with clarity for both parties – the momentum that they were each awaiting to leverage in the state’s politics, without further expectations from each other. In more ways than one, the two parties were drained of exploring any future assessment of their alliance. Any mutual trust was already long gone, with each party wanting to stand on the other’s head. A stark reality of the now-broken alliance was that for the BJP, AIADMK was only a means to an end, an object of the national party’s time-tested carrot-and-stick strategy of managing alliance partners with fear and coercion.
There are two significant ways in which the BJP failed to keep a check on AIADMK.
Firstly, it failed to read the footsteps of AIADMK general secretary and former Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami in climbing to power, and his ability to preserve his authority both within the party as well as in negotiations with the BJP. EPS tactically pushed his agenda and resolved major complications such as the restoration of the two leaves election symbol two leaves to his camp over the VK Sasikala-TTV Dhinakaran faction, and his appeals to the Election Commission while doing so by conceding space within the party and sharing power with former CM O Panneerselvam. On the other hand, OPS could neither convince a large number of AIADMK leaders — especially senior leaders such as Ponnaiyan and several others who never saw eye-to-eye with the BJP — nor establish communication with party cadres.
A simple fact is that OPS has never been a leader of the masses, nor has he been very good at organisational strategy. He has only ever been a mask in front of someone else’s authority, making him an easy pick for the BJP to serve their cause. But this arrangement had to end, when it dawned upon the BJP’s puppeteers in Tamil Nadu that OPS could no longer deliver.
The second failure of the BJP is that it fell flat on its face trying to convince EPS to restore ties with former CM J Jayalalithaa’s aide and expelled AIADMK general secretary VK Sasikala, and her nephew and Amma Makkal Munnettra Kazagam (AMMK) chief TTV Dhinakaran, for BJP’s own ends. EPS was beyond BJP’s calculations of uniting the two AIADMK factions and building a seemingly stronger AIADMK with multiple strings under BJP’s control. EPS was adamant in resisting any attempts at reconciliation with Sasikala and TTV Dhinakaran.
The bottom line of the BJP-AIADMK split rests with these two ground realities, and the mindless provocations of state BJP chief Annamalai simply accelerated the process. In the end, the many power brokers and rank climbers within the BJP are left disheartened, finding their dream of entering the new Parliament with little or no mass base suddenly shattered.
Many questions about future possibilities have surfaced in the last few days – is this the end of the road for the BJP in Tamil Nadu for now, will the AIADMK reverse its decision before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, or are there any wild cards the BJP can still play, such as roping in Sasikala and TTV Dhinakaran to build a third front in the state under BJP’s leadership?
The AIADMK’s exit came after the NDA lost three other major allies – the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, the Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab and the Janata Dal (United)in Bihar. This is also one reason why the AIADMK went ahead and delivered the blow, without fear or favour. For now, the AIADMK is unlikely to reverse its decision to leave the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) under any circumstances, except perhaps as a post-poll strategy after the 2024 general elections. But that would be too late for the BJP.
There is a prevailing assumption that Sasikala and TTV Dhinakaran, along with OPS who was expelled from AIADMK, could become a key component in BJP’s electoral strategy in Tamil Nadu. However, there is not much optimism in this bulwark, unless joined by Anbumani Ramadoss’s Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) and others. The BJP might try to rope in Vijayakanth’s Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK), along with smaller parties such as K Krishnasamy’s Puthiya Thamizhagam and AC Shanmugam’s Puthiya Needhi Katchi (PNK). Such a combination may appear to work in BJP’s favour on paper, but the ground realities are far different when it comes to their actual potential to garner votes.
The level of trust deficiency within each party, and together as an electoral alliance, is too stark to overlook. On top of all these woes, the BJP must suffer the infinite ego and reckless speeches of Annamalai, the party’s state president in Tamil Nadu. Though the party is putting up a brave front in the face of all the turmoil, the present situation is a real dilemma for the BJP. The AIADMK on the other hand appears to be in a more confident position, with no sword of Damocles hanging over its future. The AIADMK-BJP split has signalled the activation of watchtowers, and a surge of speculation over the movement of friends, allies, foes, and enemies across the political spectrum of Tamil Nadu, with potentially far-reaching implications at the national level as well.
Prof Ramu Manivannan is a political analyst and commentator on Indian politics, and a Dravidian identity scholar. He is currently a visiting professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, Colorado, USA. Views expressed are the author's own.