In the 2019 Lok Sabha election in Tamil Nadu, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)-led United Progressive Alliance made a clean sweep by winning 38 of the 39 seats leaving just one seat to the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK)-led alliance, which was also the incumbent ruling front in the state then. Even the AIADMK’s sole member of parliament, P Ravindranath, was disqualified by the Madras High Court thus leading to zero representation for the AIADMK in the bygone Lok Sabha.

Though the order was stayed by the Supreme Court in August 2023, it did not add to the AIADMK’s tally as Ravindranath, along with his father and former Chief Minister, O Pannerselvam, were ousted in July 2022 from the party, by then under the complete control of former Chief Minister Edapadi Palaniswami, also known as EPS.

By the time of the 2021 assembly elections, the first after the death of J. Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi – the respective supremos of AIADMK and DMK – the alliances in the state had changed their character and nomenclature with the DMK-led alliance renamed as the Secular Progressive Alliance and the AIADMK leading the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the state.  

The numbers of 2019, DMK-37 and AIADMK-1, were diametrically different from that of 2014 when the DMK drew a blank and the AIADMK cruised through in 37 seats with one each shared by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK). The same trend repeated in the assembly polls as well wherein DMK took 133 in 2021 as against 89 in 2016 and the AIADMK coming down from the 136 in 2016 to 66 seats in 2021. This has generally been the pattern seen in the post-MGR Tamil Nadu political scene since the 1990s when both the Dravidian parties were taking turns at roundly trouncing each other in consecutive elections, be it the assembly or the general elections.

The question that could weigh in the mind of Tamil Nadu’s voters, who exercised their ballots on 19th April in the first phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, is whether this trend of one-upmanship will repeat in 2024 as well with AIADMK making a dramatic comeback and DMK hit by anti-incumbency. Where then will be the BJP-led NDA which clearly is looking like the X factor in Tamil Nadu’s politics thanks to a set of deft moves?

The Polity team had fanned out across Tamil Nadu to find out.

Who gains from the NDA push and caste calculus?

Though the essential face-off in Tamil Nadu is between the ruling DMK and the opposition AIADMK-led alliances, the most watched constituencies in the state are actually the ones in which candidates of the NDA are in contention and promises to be three-cornered races.

These include: Coimbatore, where the state BJP chief Annamalai in taking on the two Dravidian fronts; Theni, where new NDA partner and Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK) leader, T.T.V. Dhinakaran will try to wrest what was once the sitting seat of his former party, the AIADMK; Ramanathapuram, where OPS is fighting a battle for political survival in a different theatre, the Lok Sabha; Dharmapuri, where PMK leader Ambumani Ramadoss's wife Sowmiya Anbumani is contesting from the party's home turf; Chennai South, where former Tamil Nadu chief of the BJP, Tamilisai Soundarajan, who quit as Telangana governor to contest this election, will try to win over a highly-urbanised seat equally dominated by both DMK and AIADMK; Tirunelveli, where former AIADMK minister and turn-coat, Nainar Nagendran, is the NDA candidate taking on AIADMK and Congress candidates; Kanyakumari, where old-timer and former union minister Pon Radhakrishnan of BJP will take on sitting Congress MP and actor, Vijay Vasanth; and Virudhnagar, where recent NDA convert and actor, Radhika Sarath Kumar will take on V. Vijayaprabhakaran, the son of legendary actor and the late supremo of DMDK, Captain Vijayakanth, as also the sitting two-time MP, Manickam Tagore of the Congress. 

DMK leaders in Chennai who talked to The Polity were effusive in their confidence that the three-cornered races will favour the I.N.D.I Alliance that the party leads in the state and that the NDA will make inroads only by cutting into the AIADMK vote base. For, a notable part of the above-mentioned NDA candidates has strong AIADMK legacies and deeply embedded connections in the Dravidian party’s vote bank.

Anna Arivalayam, the DMK head quarters in Chennai (Photo credit: Dr Pandikumar Subramoni)

Take the example of T.T.V. Dhinakaran, who stunned Tamil Nadu politics with his spectacular victory in the 2017 by-poll for the R.K. Nagar constituency left vacant by Jayalalitha’s death. Grabbing over 50 percent of the votes, Dhinakaran then defeated the official AIADMK nominee by more than 40,000 votes thus establishing his claim over Jayalalitha’s legacy at a time when the party had officially gathered around the EPS-OPS combine after shunning out the Sasikala group from the affairs of the party.

Seven years later, Dhinakaran and Sasikala continue to remain outside the AIADMK but now have for company OPS and his son who too are in the fight for the AIADMK legacy, though not yet officially joining hands with the Mannargudi clan, even if united under the larger NDA umbrella. That the erstwhile rivals who fought for dominance in the post-Jayalalitha months have a truce of some kind is evident from the fact that OPS had generously handed over his son’s sitting seat to Dhinakaran and himself moved on to Ramanathapuram. (The Polity reached out to P Ravindranath to know his views on this matter but was told by his personal staff that he was busy campaigning for his father in Ramanathapuram.)

District leaders of the AIADMK who spoke to The Polity on condition of anonymity accepted that Dhinakaran is a strong contender in Theni who could eat into the traditional Thevar vote bank that ensured Theni (and earlier, Periyakulam) was an AIADMK bastion. They, however, reject the possibility of Dhinakaran pulling it off, like in R.K. Nagar, and, instead, expect the DMK candidate, Thanga Tamil Selvan, sitting legislator from Andipatti and also from Thevar community, to gain from T.T.V’s presence.  

This is the political dynamic that the DMK leadership is thrilled about. A DMK district leader in Madurai, who did not wish to be named, explained this further. Of the three sub-clans of Thevar community, namely Kallar, Maravar and Agampadiyar, Dhinakaran belongs to the Kallar section and Tamil Selvan to the Maravar. While this division could split the vote-bank down the middle in Theni, DMK keeps its hope on the nearly 1 lakh Muslim votes in the constituency which could consolidate around the secular alliance. In fact, sources in Chennai told The Polity that the Congress legislator from Velachery, JMH Aassan Maulaana, has been deputed to the district to ensure this mobilization.  

The DMK leadership sees similar trends in other constituencies where the BJP or its NDA allies are attempting a breakthrough, be it Tirunelveli, Ramanathapuram, Chennai South, Nilgiris and maybe even in Coimbatore. 

In fact, AIADMK leaders are seemingly resigned to taking major loses in many such constituencies, particularly in the southern districts including Tirunelveli, Kanyakumari and Virudhnagar, where the NDA candidates are likely to relegate the AIADMK to the third position or substantially infiltrate its traditional vote bases. Tirunelveli and Coimbatore, where BJP candidates Annamalai and Nainar Nagendran are said to be within hitting distance to victory, will be testing grounds on the extent to which NDA candidates, including turncoats and allies, will be able to extract from the AIADMK vote banks.

However, AIADMK leaders in Coimbatore who talked to The Polity, on condition of anonymity, pooh-poohed the chances of Annamalai. Raja Ganesh (name changed), an AIADMK local leader who refused to divulge his official role in the party, endorsed that Annamalai has a youth following and is a team worker but dismisses his chances as mere hype created in the media. Ganesh reminds that the five sitting legislators in Coimbatore are from AIADMK and that the sole BJP MLA, Vanati Srinivasan, won only due to AIADMK support against the formidable challenge from none other than thespian Kamal Hassan.

DMK functionaries in Coimbatore also echoed this possibility. A DMK leader, also a district panchayat member, insisted to The Polity that Annamalai’s sway will confine to a few urban pockets in the city, particularly areas like Palladam which boasts of urban, middle-class votes and also south Coimbatore where Vanati Srinivasan has some influence. 

An AIADMK campaign vehicle in Marthandam (Photo credit: Shaju Balakrishnan)

In Tirunelveli, however, even local AIADMK leaders are wary about Nainar Nagendran making a huge dent on the party’s vote base and cadre. They feel Nainar’s chances to have also brightened due to DMK handing over this sitting seat to the Congress. While the AIADMK managed a 32 per cent vote share in 2019 as against the 41 percent it received in 2014, the DMK romped home with 50 percent in 2019 as opposed to the 28 percent it gained in 2014.

The BJP’s calculation in Tirunelveli will be targeted at both the AIADMK and DMK’s vote bases riding on Nainar’s popularity in the constituency where he was a three-time MLA. However, like in Theni, the DMK leadership is confident of pulling through in Tirunelveli as well. Leaders in Chennai who spoke to The Polity point to ground reports they received which suggest that Nainar, despite his best efforts and popular image, may not be able to garner more than one to one and a half lakh votes.They attribute this to the presence of ‘Pillai’ votes in the constituency which has traditionally favoured the Congress, a reason why the seat was supposedly “returned” to the former which fielded Robert Bruce as its candidate. However, seeing Nainar’s increasing acceptance among the Hindu Nadars, despite himself being a Maravar Thevar, the DMK leadership reportedly deployed its Fisheries minister and Tiruchendur MLA, Anitha R Radhakrishnan to engage the Nadar community.  

The dismay for AIADMK reverberates in Kanyakumari as well where local AIADMK leaders seemed destined to accept the third position and endorsing that the race is between Vijay Vasanth, the sitting MP from Congress and Pon Radhakrishnan, the veteran BJP leaders and former union minister who has been the long-time face of the party in the region.

(Video and graphics by Vaishnav Vinod)

A visit to the constituency surprised The Polity team as there was no inkling of any poll fever or electioneering visible in the constituency even on the last day of campaigning. On querying about this with the locals, we were told that outcome was very well known. “No posters or cut-outs are needed as only Vijay Vasanth is likely to win,” said Bhaskaran, an employee at a local petrol pump in Marthandam.

Local AIADMK leaders too expects some transfer of votes happening from the party’s base in order to ensure the defeat of the BJP candidate in a constituency dominated by the Nadars but spilt down the middle by Christian and Hindus believers hailing from the community.

However, the gloom in the southern region for the AIADMK is not reflected in the northern districts where the party sees itself on a strong footing.

Anbu Prabhakaran, a district secretary of the AIADMK in Trichy, and one of the few district-level leaders who was ready to come on record, espoused immense confidence that the party will bounce back in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and return back to power in the assembly elections of 2026 under EPS. For that matter, even DMK leaders in Chennai feel that the AIADMK’s focus is on returning to power in 2026 and has not invested much in the candidates or campaign for the Lok Sabha elections, which, in turn, drives DMK’s confidence of a 2019 encore this time as well.

However, local AIADMK leaders like Prabhakaran describes such confidence of the DMK as misplaced and predicts the AIADMK winning in at least 20-25 of the Lok Sabha seats and reversing the trends of previous years. While dismissing the impact of the AIADMK discards and turncoats now in the NDA camp, Prabhakaran affirms that the recall value and political impact of two leaves – the AIADMK symbol – is immense among the people.

A wall writing welcoming EPS to Kanyakumari (Photo credit: Shaju Balakrishnan)

As avowed supporters of EPS, Prabhakaran and his party colleagues to whom The Polity spoke to were dismissive of suggestions that the ouster of OPS and the Mannargudi clan will affect the party’s prospects. They feel that OPS did not have the ability to manage the affairs of the party when he was in charge from 2015-2020.   

The NDA factor was roundly dismissed by AIADMK local leaders in the northern and western districts who feel that the BJP’s efforts was aimed at increasing their vote share, which, though, may still remain in single digits.

The DMK leadership, for their part, are not taking the BJP-NDA challenge lightly. Besides offering a formidable contest in a handful of seats and possibly coming second in a number of significant constituencies, both of which will have a bearing on the 2026 assembly polls, the DMK leaders who spoke to The Polity fears that the NDA collectively will increase the vote share to double digits, implying a greater imprint of the erstwhile Hindi-heartland party in the Dravidian political landscape.

Will BJP be the ultimate gainer?

When the AIADMK exited from the NDA last year following outbursts by Annamalai, the state BJP chief, many observers felt that the BJP leadership will bring around the AIADMK leadership and that the alliance will be restored in no time. However, what the state witnessed in recent months was a different BJP gameplan which made many wonder whether Annamalai’s outburst was a well-time strategy to provoke AIADMK and facilitate its exit in order to initiate drastic political realignments in the state.

If Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s numerous visits to the states were any indication that the BJP’s southern push had more to it, the manner in which the BJP leadership swiftly moved to negotiate and formalize the expansion of the NDA in the state embodied the depth of the party’s Mission Tamil Nadu. While the PMK was always a call away, thanks to the Ramdoss family’s ministerial ambitions in Delhi, the manner in which the BJP leadership pulled in the Mannargudi clan and OPS together at the same time was nothing short of a political coup.

Though the DMDK did not fall for the dangled carrots, the merger of Sarath Kumar’s All India Samathva Makkal Katchi with the BJP came as a value addition. However, a booster, at least in terms of ideology, was the decision of Tamil Manila Congress, the party formed by Congress veteran, G.K. Moopanar, now led by his son, G.K. Vasan, to shift ideological allegiance to the BJP.

These deft political moves ensured that the NDA was not just a formidable force that could outsmart even the AIADMK-led alliance but also came with an alliance formula that has significant socio-political imprint with implications for the future of Tamil Nadu’s politics.

In a state where caste identities overlap with political equations and resultant power distribution, the assimilation of the Mannargudi clan, OPS and erstwhile AIADMK leaders like Nainar Nagendran under the NDA umbrella meant making huge breakthroughs in not just the Thevar vote bank, but also individually patronizing its subsets as well. By merging Sarath Kumar’s party, and in the process making further inroads into the Nadar vote base, the BJP managed to tick the right boxes in making a significant surge in southern Tamil Nadu.

If PMK’s rejoining the NDA meant a captive control over Vanniyar votes, dominant in Northern Tamil Nadu, the decision to field Annamalai in Coimbatore was clearly intended to breach the Gounder vote base in Kongu Mandala or western Tamil Nadu, and therein throw challenge the dominance of none other than E Palanisamy, the AIADMK supremo himself.

Thus, even as the EPS-led AIADMK might be dreaming of a grand comeback in 2026, the BJP had already laid the foundations to carve out a vote bank of its own at the cost of the AIADMK. Even when many optimists in the AIADMK might be dreaming of a significant show by wresting 20-25 Lok Sabha seats, the unprecedented NDA expansion in Tamil Nadu implies pushing back the Dravidian powerhouse to under 10 seats where it has a real chance of putting up a valiant fight.

While the NDA surge is likely to help a repeat sweep for the DMK, like in 2019, the BJP leadership expects good standing, if not surprise wins, in at least 8 seats where the AIADMK could be pushed to the third position. These include: Dharmapuri (Sowmiya Anbumoni), Theni (Dhinakaran), Tirunelveli (Nagendran), Ramanathapuram (OPS), Kanyakumari (Pon Radhakrishnan), Coimbatore (Annamalai), while the party has high hopes for Niligiris (L.Murugan), Chennai South (Soundararajan) and Chennai Central (Vinoj P Selvam), as well.

Dharmapuri, it may seem, could be the eventual sole NDA seat, if PMK cadre do not pull the rug, while Dhinakaran and Nagendran, and possibly even OPS, could have a shy at the victory line or may marginally fall short of the needed numbers. Annamalai and Pon Radhakrishnan may have assured runner-up positions, but for any unexpected surprises, while Soundararajan and Selvam may gain impressive reception among voters in the metropolis. Murugan, despite giving a formidable race, it is widely felt, could fail to overwhelm D Raja, who has a significant support base in Nilgiris.

Even as these numbers and poll prospects have already brought cheer to Anna Arivalayam, the DMK headquarters in Chennai, sources close to Kanimozhi told The Polity that the grand DMK show will be in Thoothukudi (Tuticorn), where the firebrand DMK leader is expected to romp home with a record margin of not less than 4 lakh votes.

DMK workers campaigning for Kanimozhi in Thoothukudi (Photo credit: Saran)

While one will have to wait till June 4th to know whether this will happen, the foregone conclusion about April 19th, the day of voting and the first phase of 2024 Lok Sabha elections is the certainty of NDA making significant inroads into the Dravidian political landscape.

Interestingly, in Coimbatore, when The Polity team reminded the leaders of the warning by K.C. Palanisamy, former MP and spokesperson of the AIADMK, who was ousted for opposing the alliance with the BJP, local party leaders claimed that it was not just Palanisamy but even T.T.V. Dhinakaran and Sasikala as well who had opposed any tie-up with the BJP, and yet landed up in their net. While The Polity’s attempt to reach K.C. Palanisamy did not fructify, his closest aides claimed that the expelled leader will not join the BJP and is working towards reuniting the AIADMK factions and restoring the erstwhile glory of the party.

Despite such varied vibes received from different parts of Tamil Nadu, it seems to be anxious days ahead for the AIADMK leadership. Even as the NDA is destined to eat into the party’s traditional vote bases, party insiders are worried about how these realignments will affect its revival fortunes in 2026. Even a marginal slide in vote shares will make a decisive impact as more and more political forces, including the BJP and expectant ones like actor Vijay’s party, will seek to carve out greater space in the already crowded political spectrum of Tamil Nadu.

The loser will be the one that is most vulnerable, which, at present, seems to be that same party which ruled the state till a few years ago, and then looked invincible.

(The Polity wishes to thank a handful of our well-wishers who helped in the making of this report, but did not wish to be named.)