Union Home Minister Amit Shah recently sounded bullish about the BJP making inroads in Tamil Nadu. He wanted the State to elect more than 25 MPs in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The strain in the AIADMK - BJP alliance became prominent when the late AIADMK supremo and former Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa, had distanced herself from the BJP after a humbling defeat in the 2004 Parliamentary elections.
But her death in 2016 sent the AIADMK into a crisis of leadership that threatened to split the Dravidian party into two, before a compromise was reached. During that period of intra-party chaos, the AIADMK realised that it had to have good relations with the BJP to stay afloat.
