CHENNAI: DMK president and Chief Minister M K Stalin on Saturday said the alliance between the AIADMK and the BJP is against ideals such as protection of state rights and it is doomed to fail.
Reacting to Union Home Minister and BJP’s chief strategist Amit Shah’s announcement that the AIADMK is rejoining the NDA to fight the 2026 Assembly election together, Stalin, in a statement on Saturday, said, “Tamil people are aware of the developments that followed the raids by the central investigative agencies in the cases against AIADMK leaders and their relatives. They ran to the BJP leadership for sparing them. The alliance was confirmed based on this compromise. They have mortgaged the AIADMK following those two raids and now they are desperate to mortgage Tamil Nadu.”
He added: “The AIADMK-BJP alliance is doomed to fail. It was the people of Tamil Nadu who handed repeated defeats to this coalition. Now, Shah has reconstituted the same failed alliance.” It is a failure alliance and the tie-up is a ‘corruption’, by itself.
Stalin also questioned the basis of the alliance. “On what ideological basis the alliance was formed. Shah said a common minimum programme (CMP) will be drafted. AIADMK claims to oppose NEET, Hindi imposition, three-language policy, Waqf Act and unfair delimitation. Are all these mentioned in their CMP? Shah did not speak about it but only criticised the DMK government. He did not even allow the AIADMK leadership to speak.”
He also alleged the NDA alliance is against state rights, linguistic rights and Tamil culture.
“Shah simply downplayed the opposition to NEET as a ‘diversionary tactic’. About 20 students in TN and also a few students in Bihar died by suicide. Did all of them die for the same reason as Shah alleges?” asked Stalin.
The DMK’s allies have also slammed the tie-up. TNCC president K Selvaperunthagai said, “For the last three years, former TN BJP chief K Annamalai had consistently spoken against the Dravidian movement and targeted the AIADMK. It remains to be seen whether he will continue levelling the same charges now.”
The TNCC chief said the alliance has no ideological foundation and questioned whether the AIADMK would now accept the BJP’s policy positions.
VCK president Thol Thirumavalavan asked who was leading the alliance? If the alliance is under the leadership of the AIADMK, then its general secretary should be the one to declare it.
Talking to reporters in Coimbatore, he said the same alliance was defeated by the people in 2019 Lok Sabha election and the 2021 Assembly election. “Therefore, I believe this alliance will not have any significant impact against the DMK-led front,” he added.
“Earlier, EPS’s stand was to form an alliance in the state without the BJP, and this was known to everyone. He has been forced to tie up with the BJP, considering the recent development wherein former education minister K A Sengottaiyan met Shah personally, despite it being unclear what the agenda behind their meeting was. In fact, the BJP forged the alliance after threatening the AIADMK, as it was clearly visible when the tie-up was announced by Shah in Chennai on Friday. However, there is still suspicion about whether the alliance is under the BJP or the AIADMK in the state,” he said.
