NDA-AIADMK breakup | The cost of the alliance was getting too high to bear for the Dravidian party
Summary
AIADMK apparently felt that BJP high command is deliberately ignoring its pleas to stop BJP State President Annamalai from passing derisive remarks against the Dravidian party’s revered leaders and it realised that the cost of the alliance was getting too high to bear. Already AIADMK was being mocked as a ‘slave party’ of the BJP by the ruling DMK and its allies, and to silently bear the taunts was becoming a problem. The loss of minority votes because of the alliance and the fact that potential allies were also getting put off by the presence of BJP in the alliance were additional factors that led AIADMK to pull out from NDA, writes noted political observer and sports commentator Sumanth C Raman.
It is the rarest of rare occurrences for the BJP high command to be taken unawares by an alliance partner. Usually, it is the saffron party that carries out sudden strikes debilitating its allies in various states. This time, as the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) in Tamil Nadu announced its breakup from the alliance with the BJP, the party’s top brass were caught by surprise.
The BJP should have seen it coming. As its State President K.Annamalai went hammer and tongs at the AIADMK leaders, past and present, it must have occurred to the party that the Dravidian party, despite being a docile and loyal ally, would have a breaking point.
When former Chief Minister and AIADMK General Secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswamy (EPS) called for a meeting of senior party leaders, MPs and MLAs of the party on September 25, the rumours strengthened that the AIADMK had had enough and wanted to quit the alliance. However, the BJP High Command was somehow led to believe that the AIADMK would pull back from the brink and pass a resolution authorising EPS to take the final decision. When party leader K. P. Munusamy came out of the meeting and announced that the alliance was off, it left the BJP blindsided.
Normally loquacious, Annamalai was at a loss for words after the announcement and could only say that the party high command would speak about the alliance. The State Unit of the BJP quickly sent out a message asking its leaders not to comment on the split.
Interestingly the AIADMK leaders also were reluctant to comment about the split with EPS, who was visiting a temple in Andhra Pradesh on September 27, shying away from answering any question about the alliance. This led to renewed speculation that a patch up effort was on largely from the BJP side to save the alliance.
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The AIADMK has had a difficult time dealing with Annamalai. The former IPS officer turned politician has pulled no punches against his former alliance partner, passing derisive remarks about former Chief Minister J.Jayalalithaa who is revered by the AIADMK cadre and then training his guns on one of the founders of the DMK (from which the AIADMK emerged through a split) — former Chief Minister C.N.Annadurai.
The AIADMK had protested during his earlier statement on Jayalalithaa and later even passed a resolution condemning Annamalai for his statement. The party sent a copy of this resolution to the BJP bosses and asked for their intervention in getting Annamalai to tone down his criticism. Subsequently EPS had a meeting with Home Minister Amit Shah where too he is believed to have raised the issue of constant sniping at the AIADMK by Annamalai.
The AIADMK as a major Dravidian party, albeit a diluted version, has also been at odds with the repeated attacks on Dravidianism by Annamalai. AIADMK has a large vote bank among dominant communities like the Gounders, Mukkulathor and some others rooted, though not too strongly, in the Dravidian ideology. The attempt by Annamalai to convert some of them to the Hindutva ideology was also seen as a threat.
When none of its entreaties to the BJP High command yielded results the AIADMK concluded that perhaps the High Command was not averse to letting Annamalai speak out and that the cost of the alliance was getting too high to bear. Already AIADMK was being mocked as a slave party of the BJP by the ruling DMK and its allies and to silently bear the taunts was becoming a problem. The loss of minority votes because of the alliance and the fact that potential allies were also getting put off by the presence of BJP in the alliance were additional factors. Eventually the AIADMK decided that the BJP was primarily interested in gulping the AIADMK’s vote share in order to grow in the State. Seeing what happened to the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra also reinforced that view.
Over the last 2 days the BJP is believed to have reached out to the AIADMK to placate them and potentially salvage the alliance. However thus far the AIADMK has stood firm in its stance that as long as Annamalai continues as State BJP Chief they have nothing to discuss on the alliance. Changing a State Party President under pressure from another party will not look good for the BJP but at the moment there seems to be little choice for the BJP if they want to save the alliance.
The BJP since Annamalai took over has certainly grown in the State. Estimates of their vote share range from 7-10 percent up from the 3 percent vote share earlier. However, it still has the image of a Hindi, North Indian party and is far from achieving critical mass to win on its own steam in the State. Its wooing of certain castes like the Devendrakula Vellalars has also not yielded the expected returns.
For now, the silence on both sides continues, though K.P.Munusamy, on September 28, reiterated that there was no going back on the AIADMK’s decision to break away. The subdued reaction from the BJP shows that they have not lost hopes as yet of salvaging the alliance but key questions remain. If the BJP was so keen on the alliance, why did they let their State President aggressively bash its own ally for several months? Why did they not rein him in when the AIADMK complained multiple times and in writing too? How did they miscalculate that the AIADMK would not pull the plug? For an electoral machine of unsurpassed efficiency that the BJP is, this episode seems to be an out of character slip up.
For the BJP, which is trying to rebuild the NDA before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the loss of its biggest alliance partner will be a blow, not in terms of the seats they may have won together in Tamil Nadu which was never expected to be significant, but in the perception battle among the public and other potential alliance partners across India. The addition of the JDS in Karnataka has been overshadowed somewhat by the exit of the AIADMK from the NDA. Maybe there is still action left in this alliance saga. But increasingly that looks less likely.
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