Chennai:
Last week the BJP and AIADMK unveiled an alliance for the 2026 Tamil Nadu election.
This week the Dravidian party seemed to threw a spanner into its ally's plans for the southern state, in the event the alliance manages to defeat the ruling DMK-Congress combine.
Comments by AIADMK boss Edappadi K Palaniswami, or EPS, suggest the Tamil party will not accept a coalition government and that the alliance with the BJP is "only for the election".
The BJP has played down EPS' remarks, insisting the focus remains on defeating the ruling DMK.
But it is unlikely that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party will be impressed.
The PM had earlier expressed his happiness - "stronger together..." he posted on X - over the AIADMK's decision to join his party-led national alliance.
EPS' comments also contradict those made by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, with whom he shared the stage last week while announcing the AIADMK-BJP alliance.
Mr Shah had said the two parties will contest next year's election "together" and that no "conditions" had been made by the Tamil party. "... have decided that AIADMK, BJP and all alliance parties will contest the upcoming Vidhan Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu together as NDA," he said.
READ |"No Conditions": Amit Shah As AIADMK Back In BJP-Led Alliance
EPS then had described the alliance as "founded on a shared vision for Tamil Nadu's progress and prosperity." and praised Mr Modi's "unwavering support" for the development of Tamil Nadu.
The apparent backtrack today comes amid reports some AIADMK leaders are unhappy with the prospect of a BJP alliance. The unhappiness stems partly from concerns over loss of votes from minority communities, and also the AIADMK-BJP alliance's poor track record in the last three major elections in the state - the 2021 Assembly and 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
In 2021 the AIADMK, allied with the BJP, won 75 seats - down from 136 in the election prior - and was dumped out of power by the DMK and Congress. It was similarly routed in the 2019 and 2024 general elections, before which it snapped ties with the BJP winning just one of the 20 and 34 seats contested.
The BJP contested 28 seats across those two elections and won zero.
By contrast, and this underlines the magnitude of the task facing the AIADMK, Chief Minister MK Stalin's DMK delivered a 100 per cent record in those two polls, winning 24 and 22 seats.
The poor performance in the 2024 election - which was offset by a surprising 7.58 per cent increase in vote share - led to the BJP reconsidering its options.
Tamil Nadu politics is dominated by the DMK and AIADMK, parties with strong roots in the Dravidian narrative, and neither the Congress nor BJP have ever managed to break in.
This makes their respective alliances critical to maintaining a presence in the state.
The earlier alliance broke down after K Annamalai, then the BJP's state unit boss, attacked iconic past leaders of the Tamil party, including ex-chief ministers J Jayalalithaa and MG Ramachandran.
READ |"Happiest Moment": AIADMK Officially Ends Alliance With BJP, Exits NDA
A furious AIADMK demanded his resignation but the BJP refused to oblige. The speculation was that the BJP was trying to engineer a split so it could focus on establishing itself in Tamil Nadu.
However, alongside the renewal of the alliance, the BJP also dropped Mr Annamalai and, in what has been seen as good optics, replaced him with a former AIADMK leader - Nainar Nagenthiran.
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