The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) have officially announced a coalition for the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah made the announcement on Friday during a press conference in Chennai. “AIADMK and BJP leaders have decided that AIADMK, BJP and all the alliance parties will contest the upcoming Vidhan Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu together as NDA,” Shah said.
He further emphasized the leadership structure of the alliance, stating, “These elections will be contested under the leadership of PM Modi on a national level and under the leadership of AIADMK leader Edappadi K. Palaniswami on the state level.”
He emphasized that the alliance would operate with mutual respect and autonomy. “We will have no interference in the internal matters of the AIADMK… This alliance is going to be beneficial to both NDA and AIADMK,” he added.
The declaration came on the same day that Nainar Nagendran emerged as the sole contender to replace K. Annamalai as president of the BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit.
History of on-and-off ties
BJP and AIADMK have had a roller-coaster past of coming together and splitting up time and again. Their initial major alliance was during the 1998 general elections, when AIADMK, under the leadership of J. Jayalalithaa, formed an alliance with BJP and together won 30 of 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu. But the union proved to be fleeting, and AIADMK withdrew support to the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government a year later.
The two parties reunited during the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, and the results turned out to be disappointing. AIADMK succeeded in securing a single seat only, whereas BJP went blank within the state. At the national level, this election came as an end for NDA and UPA re-entered office.
During the post-Jayalalithaa political era, the two parties reunited once again for the 2021 Tamil Nadu Assembly polls, securing 75 seats in total. However, intra-party differences caused a split in 2023.
The BJP and AIADMK contested 2024 Lok Sabha polls independently and both of them didn’t manage to capture a single seat, while the DMK won all 39 seats in Tamil Nadu.
With the new alliance for 2026, both sides are now eager to reorient their strategy and regain lost ground in the state.