Talks with TVK failed due to steep poll demands: AIADMK

The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) had first held unsuccessful talks with actor Vijay’s newly launched party the Tamizhaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK) from early last year before reviving it’s alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on April 11, according to senior leaders from both parties.

A senior AIADMK leader aware of the talks said that despite being a political greenhorn TVK’s demands were steep. “TVK wanted to contest in half of the 234 assembly seats and to run the government for the first 2.5 years (if the alliance won),” a senior AIADMK leader said.

Ever since Vijay launched TVK last year to debut in the 2026 assembly elections, the ruling DMK, opposition AIADMK and political parties in Tamil Nadu have been worried about Vijay eating into their vote bank among youngsters, women, and anti-DMK votes given his cult status in Tamil cinema-- which he quit at his peak to enter politics.

TVK’s internal assessment is that their vote share will be 18%, which is largely based on a C-voter survey in March, those in the know of the matter said. It showed that after incumbent chief minister and DMK president M K Stalin (27%), Vijay was the second most preferred chief ministerial candidate with 18% voting followed by AIADMK general secretary Edappadi Palansiwami (EPS)-10% and BJP’s former state president K Annamalai (9%).

To put that in perspective, a major chunk of the votes hare is shared between the DMK and AIADMK, the two parties who have ruled Tamil Nadu alternatively since 1967. The vote share in the 2021 assembly elections of the DMK was 38% while the AIADMK in alliance with the BJP was 33%. In the 2024 general elections, DMK had 26.9% while AIADMK and BJP who contested separately were at 20% and 11% respectively.

“But, the AIADMK has lost every election since J Jayalalaithaa’s death,” said a TVK leader not wishing to be named. “Most of their allies remained with the BJP and did not go after the AIADMK left the alliance.” TVK is also one of the parties to have moved the Supreme Court against the Waqf (Amendment) Act keeping with their goal to establish that they work for the minorities– a vote bank with whom the AIADMK has lost ground given their alliance with the BJP since 2019.

In the present scenario, it is a four cornered contest in 2026 in Tamil Nadu with the DMK-led INDIA bloc, AIADMK-led NDA, Vijay’s TVK, and S Seeman’s Naam Tamizhar Katchi (NTK). The BJP in Tamil Nadu has also expressed its interest in bringing the NTK into their fold. A second AIADMK leader explained that the anti-DMK votes were not being consolidated with the party and being split in multiple ways by going to BJP, NTK and TVK.

Prashant Kishor who is Vijay’s special political advisor has advised him that he has better chances facing 2026 without aligning with AIADMK. “I’m not seeing any alliance right now…at least not till December,” Kishor had told a vernacular Tamil channel in Chennai in March. “If AIADMK allies with BJP, then TVK is also taking all the anti-BJP votes,” Kishor had said, adding that eventually the novelty factory that Vijay’s TVK has will fade.

Until the AIADMK, which broke off from the BJP in 2023, joined hands with them again, Vijay and the AIADMK had not criticised each other. At TVK’s inaugural conference last October, Vijay had announced that DMK and BJP are his political and ideological enemies while AIADMK did not find a mention in his speeches. On April 13, two days after Union home minister Amit Shah announced that the AIADMK and BJP will fight the 2026 elections together with EPS leading the National Democratic Alliance in TN, Vijay made his first critical remark against the Dravidian party. He accused the BJP of being in an ‘indirect alliance’ with the DMK while having an opportunistic alliance with the AIADMK. “People will teach a lesson to both the covert anti-people coalition and the pressure-based alliance that has been rejected in the past elections,” Vijay had said.

Vijay, at 50, is untested in politics. “But Vijay will alter Tamil Nadu’s political arithmetic,” says political analyst Maalan Narayanan. “Voters who are dissatisfied with the DMK and AIADMK will vote for Vijay. If he joins hands with other regional parties, he could cause some trouble.” Crucially, Vijay has offered power sharing which has been a demand of the DMK’s ally Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) but a concept rejected by both DMK and AIADMK. Last week, EPS also rejected the notion of a coalition government with the BJP in the event they win the 2026 assembly elections.

Vijay joins the list of matinee idols who straddled cinema and politics in Tamil Nadu with the most successful being M G Ramachandran who founded ADMK (later renamed AIADMK) after he was let go from the DMK and remained chief minister until his death.