AIADMK Split and Vijay’s Rise: How Tamil Nadu Politics Is Entering a Transformative New Era

In 1971, when the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) under M. Karunanidhi swept the polls, winning 184 of the 234 Assembly seats, M.G. Ramachandran—the party treasurer and Tamil cinema superstar —was in Kashmir shooting for a film. Soon after the results were announced, he reportedly called Karunanidhi seeking a berth in the new cabinet. Though Karunanidhi was open to the idea, constitutional experts are said to have advised that MGR, as he was popularly known, would have to quit acting if he were to become a minister. The episode widened the rift between the two leaders, eventually culminating in the split of the DMK and the birth of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK).

Fifty-five years later, the party that emerged from the DMK has undergone yet another—perhaps its most consequential—split, after Tamil Nadu delivered one of the most impactful verdicts in its recent political history. In the Assembly election held this April, the AIADMK—originally founded as the Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam before being renamed the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam during the Emergency, ostensibly to ward off possible action against regional parties—suffered its worst-ever electoral setback. The party won just 47 seats, while its allies secured six, pushing the once-dominant force to third place in the Assembly.

The debacle culminated in a major rebellion within the party, with a significant section of legislators defying the leadership diktat and extending support to the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) government. “We are not against the AIADMK, but want to save the party of Amma [Jayalalithaa],” says rebel leader C.V. Shanmugam. “It is true that the party under J. Jayalalithaa also suffered setbacks, but after every defeat, she had the ability to bring it back to power. Under the present leadership of Edappadi K. Palaniswami, however, it has been a series of defeats,” he adds.

Along with Shanmugam, senior leaders S.P. Velumani and C. Vijayabaskar spearheaded the rebel camp and were subsequently expelled from the party.

“The AIADMK was not formed because of any ideological difference with the DMK,” admits veteran leader Panruti Ramachandran, who had served in MGR’s cabinet. “The party first made deep electoral inroads because of the immense popularity of MGR and later Jayalalithaa. But after Jayalalithaa’s demise, the party could not fill the leadership vacuum, resulting in the present crisis.”

The rebels repeatedly accuse Palaniswami of attempting to become chief minister “through the back door” with the support of the DMK. “The AIADMK’s politics has fundamentally been about fighting the DMK. MGR and Jayalalithaa did that. But Palaniswami is eager to become chief minister even at the cost of betraying the party’s core political line,” says Shanmugam.

Yet, many political observers do not see the alleged understanding with the DMK as the principal reason behind the split. “The leadership vacuum created by the absence of a towering figure had been weakening the party for a long time. The unexpected election result merely accelerated the crisis,” says an AIADMK MLA who continues with the official camp but requested anonymity. His remarks indicate that disenchantment runs deep even among those who remain loyal to the present leadership.

Prolonged Turbulence

After the demise of J. Jayalalithaa in 2016, the AIADMK has undergone a prolonged phase of turbulence, driven largely by leadership struggles and competing power centres.

O. Panneerselvam, Jayalalithaa’s trusted stand-in, had twice occupied the chief minister’s chair when she was forced to step down following adverse court rulings. After her death, her close aide V.K. Sasikala assumed the post of party general secretary and attempted to position herself as chief minister—a move resisted by another section within the party. However, Sasikala’s influence steadily waned after she was convicted in a corruption case and sent to prison. She was later expelled from the party.

“The AIADMK survived all these years because the supreme leaders–MGR and later Jayalalithaa– commanded unquestioned allegiance from both the leadership and the cadre. Two things happened after Jayalalithaa: first, the absence of a strong leader, and second, the lack of clarity in the party’s political line. Both contributed to the present situation,” says Panruti.

Beyond political strategy, some observers see the crisis within the AIADMK as reflecting deeper caste fault lines within the leadership. Political analyst R. Vijaya Shankar says that alongside the absence of a commanding leader, caste rivalries have aggravated the party’s decline.“Palaniswami belongs to the Gounder community and is seen as trying to sideline the Thevars from the leadership structure. Earlier leaders like O. Panneerselvam belong to the Mukkulathor community within the Thevars.” At the same time, he argues that after Jayalalithaa’s demise, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) saw the weakening of the AIADMK as an opportunity. “The BJP hoped that controlling—or eventually benefitting from the disintegration—of the AIADMK would create a political vacuum that the saffron party could fill,” he says.

Unlike the DMK, which retained an identifiable ideological framework and a dynastic line of succession after Karunanidhi, the AIADMK remained heavily dependent on charismatic authority—first that of MGR and later Jayalalithaa. In the absence of such a unifying figure, factional rivalries, caste alignments and shifting political strategies have come to dominate the party’s internal dynamics. The repeated recalibration of its relationship with the BJP has further blurred the party’s political identity, weakening its traditional anti-DMK plank. What was once Tamil Nadu’s principal alternative pole of power now risks fragmentation at a time when newer political formations are attempting to occupy the opposition space.

“The principal beneficiary of the AIADMK’s weakening could well be the BJP,” says Venkitanarayanan Subramanian, head of the department of political science at Christ University. “The BJP believes that for it to gain a meaningful foothold in Tamil Nadu, the Dravidian parties must first weaken,” he says.

Post-Election Recalibration

The Assembly election results, which propelled actor-turned-politician Vijay to the chief minister’s office, have also triggered a broader recalibration of Tamil Nadu politics. “The INDIA alliance has, for all practical purposes, ceased to exist in the state,” says Shankar. According to him, the Congress distanced itself from the DMK-led alliance almost immediately after the results were announced, with the Left parties and the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) following suit.

“Even if these parties had neither backed the Vijay government nor exited the alliance, the government would still have survived because the split within the AIADMK had become inevitable,” he says. In his assessment, the dissension within the AIADMK entered a decisive phase only after the election results laid bare the scale of the party’s political decline. He believes that with a significant section of the AIADMK extending support to Vijay, the Union government is unlikely to adopt an overtly antagonistic stance towards the incumbent state government.

During the election campaign, many observers had predicted that Vijay’s TVK would primarily eat into the AIADMK’s vote share. But TVK disrupted the electoral calculations of all the entrenched political formations. The scale and suddenness of TVK’s rise evoked memories of MGR’s emergence. He had similarly transformed Tamil Nadu politics by leveraging cinematic charisma into mass political mobilisation. Vijay’s rise has coincided with a phase of exhaustion within both the DMK and the AIADMK ecosystems, particularly after the decline of towering personalities such as Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa. Yet, there is also a crucial difference: MGR emerged from within the Dravidian movement and inherited its political grammar, whereas Vijay is attempting to build a new political space at a time when the ideological certainties of Dravidian politics itself appear to be weakening.

A Transformative Moment

“It is too early to predict how Vijay will evolve politically,” says Subramanian. “Everything depends on how he chooses to project himself in the coming years.”

The comparison with MGR is inevitable. In 1977, when the AIADMK won its first Assembly election, the party secured 130 seats on its own, comfortably crossing the majority mark. MGR’s victory was built on personal charisma, carefully cultivated mass appeal and an expansive welfare-oriented political narrative. Whether Vijay can similarly transform cinematic popularity into a durable political movement—and sustain it—remains the central question in Tamil Nadu politics today.

“Given that Tamil Nadu is a rela­tively prosperous state with a robust eco­nomic base, there should not be much difficulty for Vijay in imple­menting the welfare measures promised in the manifesto,” says political scientist K.R. Vignesh Karthik.

With the rebel faction of the AIADMK backing the government, the new administration may not have to depend on the Congress or the Left parties for key policy decisions. According to Shankar, the real political test for the Vijay government will lie in how it positions itself on contentious Centre-state issues.

“The Union government had asked the DMK government under M.K. Stalin to sign on to the PM-SHRI scheme. The Stalin government refused, arguing that it amounted to interference in the state’s education policy. Now, with support from sections of the AIADMK, what the Vijay government does on issues like this will be politically crucial,” he says.

The simultaneous decline of the AIADMK and the rise of Vijay mark a potentially transformative moment in Tamil Nadu politics. For nearly five decades, the AIADMK served as one of the two pillars of the Dravidian political order. Now, with the AIADMK on a downward trajectory after successive splits and electoral setbacks, it remains to be seen whether the vacuum created by its decline will consolidate Vijay’s position or enable the BJP, which has long remained on the margins of Tamil Nadu politics, to emerge as a mainstream political force in the state.

N.K. Bhoopesh is an assistant editor, reporting on South India with a focus on politics, developmental challenges, and stories rootded in social justice