AIADMK General Secretary Edappadi Palaniswami on Saturday said that his party will not form an alliance with the BJP for the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections set to take place in 2026.
“AIADMK will not contest 2026 Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu in alliance with the BJP,” Palaniswami said while speaking to reporters in Salem.
Speaking about the party’s performance in the Lok Sabha elections, Palaniswami rebuffed the view that several seats could have been won had there been an alliance between the AIADMK and BJP.
AIADMK did not win a single seat in the Tamil Nadu Lok Sabha election this year, while the Congress-led INDIA alliance ended up sweeping up all 39 seats. In 2019, the DMK and it allies won 38 out of 39 seats.
“I campaigned alone for all the AIADMK candidates across the state, whereas the BJP and INDIA alliance had several national and state level leaders who went around campaigning in full throttle,” Palaniswami said.
The former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister also noted that despite a lack of support and misinformation against AIADMK, the party managed to increase its vote share by 1 per cent as compared to the 2019 elections.
Palaniswami also refuted the claims of the BJP-led NDA gaining ground in Tamil Nadu and said that the votes of AIADMK had not gone to any other party.
“Many are trying to project that the BJP has grown in Tamil Nadu. In 2014, NDA’s vote share was 18.80 per cent. In 2024, the NDA’s vote share is 18.28 per cent. So it’s wrong to say that the BJP alliance has grown in TN. The vote share of BJP and DMK has gone down. But the media keeps talking only about AIADMK saying our votes have gone to others. Our votes haven’t gone anywhere,” he said.
DMK had secured a landslide victory in the 2021 Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu by winning 133 out of 234 constituencies. DMK’s leader MK Stalin became the eighth Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu replacing AIADMK’s Edappadi Palaniswami.
(With PTI inputs)
Comments
0 comment