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))
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Among the AIADMK’s partners and even compared to the DMK’s allies, the BJP’s contested vote share of 34.2% was the lowest, which hints at a poor transfer of the AIADMK’s votes to the BJP compared to others.
Table 2 | The table looks at the effect of BJP’s presence on Tamil Nadu’s social fabric. All figures in %.
The Centre for the Study of Developing Society-Lokniti’s post-poll study in 2021 also brought out this dissatisfaction of the AIADMK voter (Table 2). On being asked whether the BJP’s rise will be detrimental or good for the State’s social fabric, the highest share (32%) of the alliance’s voters said it was “bad”, while 25% said it was “good”. Among the rest, 31% said it “doesn’t make a difference”, and 12% said they had no opinion. This could explain the jubilation of the AIADMK’s cadre at the news that its leadership had decided to break relations with the BJP; they seem enthused about the return of voters who had left the party.
Table 3 | The table shows the party-wise overall vote share (%) in the 2022 urban local body elections in Tamil Nadu.
Another factor to consider is the implication of the results of the 2022 urban local body elections (Table 3). The AIADMK and the BJP did not contest these elections as an alliance. An analysis of the vote share in all the municipal corporations shows that the AIADMK’s overall vote share reduced to 21% in Chennai and 25.5% in other cities. Notably, in the 2021 Assembly elections, the AIADMK combine’s vote shares in the urban and semi-urban areas were 36.6% and 39.9%, respectively (Table 4).
Table 4 | The table shows the urban-rural divide of the vote share of AIADMK+ and DMK+ in 2021 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections.
On the other hand, the DMK’s overall vote share in the 2022 municipal elections was 42.9%, much closer to the DMK combine’s vote shares in 2021 in urban and semi-urban areas (46.3% and 44.2%, respectively). The BJP’s overall vote share in the 2022 urban local body elections was its highest (6.8%).
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A reduction in the AIADMK’s urban vote shares and the retention of the DMK’s urban vote shares indicates that the BJP might have eaten into the AIADMK’s urban vote shares, a factor that could have affected the party leadership’s decision in breaking ties with the BJP.
Table 5 | The table shows the region-wise vote share of AIADMK+ and DMK+ in 2021 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections.
The fact that the voters in the western region, a stronghold of the AIADMK, held a better perception of the BJP should also be considered in understanding the AIADMK’s fear about encroachment. A region-wise vote share (Table 5) secured in the 2021 State elections shows that the AIADMK alliance secured 45.2% of the votes in the western region, its best performance among all the regions. As seen in Table 2, the western region is where the anti-BJP sentiment was the lowest. Only 23% of those in this region said “bad” when asked whether the BJP’s rise is detrimental or good for the social fabric, the lowest among all the regions by a huge margin.
The fact that K. Annamalai, the State BJP chief, also hails from the western region and belongs to the dominant OBC community that AIADMK supremo Edappadi K. Palaniswami belongs to, is also a factor in the AIADMK’s discomfort with the relative rise of the BJP as a force in Tamil Nadu.
Source: Election Commission of India, the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
The Centre for the Study of Developing Society-Lokniti’s post-poll study was conducted from April 7 to April 20 in Tamil Nadu. The survey was conducted among 4,354 voters at 160 polling stations in 40 Assembly constituencies. Interviews of electors were conducted face-to-face at their homes after voting had taken place in their area.
vignesh.r@thehindu.co.in, srinivasan.vr@thehindu.co.in, rebecca.varghese@thehindu.co.in
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