Last week, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) snapped ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance. The separation was sudden given that the AIADMK supported a series of Central government decisions such as the dilution of Article 370, the farm Bills, and the idea of simultaneous elections.
Its discomfort with the BJP’s Tamil Nadu leadership apart, the AIADMK’s ostensible rationale for the break up has also got to do with the fact that the alliance has so far provided only diminishing returns.
Table 1 | The table shows the overall and contested vote shares secured by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)-led alliance and AIADMK-led alliance in the 2021 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections. (*c = change in % points (pp))
