After the DMK-led All India Alliance won a clear majority in the Lok Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu, the main opposition party AIADMK on Thursday blamed BJP state chief K Annamalai for the party’s decision to break away from the NDA. At a press conference, AIADMK leader SP Velumani said that if Annamalai was not there, the party could have won 35 seats in alliance with the NDA.
Highlighting the AIADMK’s performance in the elections, Velumani said the party was successful in increasing its vote share from 19.39 per cent in 2019 to 20.3 per cent in 2024. He claimed that the party broke ties with the NDA because of Annamalai’s alleged disrespect to the legacy of Anna and Jayalalithaa.
Criticising Annamalai, he said, “Earlier we were in alliance with the BJP under the leadership of Tamilisai Soundararajan and later L Murugan. However, after Annamalai came to power, he continued to criticise our leaders, including Amma, Anna and our leader Edappadi K. Palanisamy, despite our alliance. Annamalai’s actions forced us to decide to pull out of the alliance. Had the alliance continued, we would have got 35 seats.”
Annamalai was defeated by DMK’s Ganapathy Rajkumar by a huge margin of over 1 lakh votes.
Unlike the last election, where the AIADMK was able to secure one constituency, this time the party lost all 39 Lok Sabha seats. The Dravidian party, once a dominant force, has now come third in 12 key constituencies, while the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is second after the DMK. The BJP secured second place in nine of these seats.
