BJP president Amit Shah today cancelled his visit to Chennai, where he and union minister Piyush Goyal were to announce a tie-up with Tamil Nadu's ruling AIADMK for the national election. Sources say while the alliance is definitely on track, smaller parties like DMDK are not yet completely on board with their share of seats.
The announcement of an alliance between the AIADMK and the BJP may not include seat details just yet, say sources.
Even before its tie-up with the BJP, the AIADMK announced a pact with the PMK and also its share of seats. Chief Minister E Palaniswamy and his deputy O Panneerselvam met with PMK's S Ramadoss, after which it was announced that the smaller party will contest seven parliamentary seats in 39-seat Tamil Nadu.
The BJP yesterday finalized its alliance with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra. In Tamil Nadu, it is a minor player compared to the ruling AIADMK.
In 2014, the BJP, snubbed by Jayalalithaa, formed an alliance with parties like MDMK, PMK and DMDK and won only two seats; the BJP's Pon Radhakrishnan, who won the party's lone seat in Kanyakumari, became a union minister. The J Jayalalithaa-led AIAMDK won 37 seats.
Two years later, the BJP scored a duck in the Tamil Nadu election. The party is aggressively chasing an alliance this time to gain a foothold in the major southern state.
The AIADMK, pursued by the BJP, held out for long and even declared more than once that such an alliance was out of the question. But over the past two years, the party has seen dramatic changes since the death of its charismatic and strong leader Jayalalithaa in 2016.
The AIADMK split down the middle with a rebel faction supporting Jayalalithaa's closest aide VK Sasikala, who made a failed bid to take over the party and chief ministership before being jailed for corruption. Sasikala's nephew TTV Dhinakaran has launched AMMK and even won Jayalalithaa's RK Nagar constituency in a by-election.
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