New Delhi: One year ahead of the upcoming assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and the BJP on Friday (April 11) announced that they would contest the polls together as part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Their move comes over a year and a half after the AIADMK acrimoniously cut ties with the saffron party and exited the NDA.

Union home minister Amit Shah announced the alliance at a press conference in Chennai that was also attended by AIADMK general secretary and former Tamil Nadu chief minister E. Palaniswami, among others.

Shah said at the presser that the alliance would fight the assembly election under Palaniswami’s leadership.

He said that the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government has raised sanatan dharma, the three-language policy, the NEET exam and delimitation in order to distract attention away from the state’s core issues.

These core issues, the home minister alleged, were corruption, law and order issues as well as atrocities on Dalits and women.

In a post on X, Palaniswami, who hosted Shah for dinner at his Chennai residence, said the alliance was aimed at “[liberating] Tamil Nadu from the regressive evil governance of the DMK” and “[rectifying] the historic missteps that have hindered the state’s progress”.

In September 2023, the AIADMK left the NDA after it accused the BJP of not being able to rein in its then-state chief K. Annamalai, who it said was making “controversial” remarks against AIADMK leaders, including J. Jayalalithaa and C.N. Annadurai.

Jayalalithaa and Annadurai are former chief ministers of Tamil Nadu, while the latter is considered the political mentor of AIADMK founder M.G. Ramachandran.

Fielding a question at Friday’s press conference, Shah said the BJP-AIADMK alliance “is now going to be permanent and there will never be any hitches in it henceforth”.

The alliance also comes amid a change in leadership in the Tamil Nadu BJP, with Tirunelveli MLA Nainar Nagendran set to replace Annamalai as president of the saffron party’s state unit.

This is against the backdrop of both Annamalai as well as Palaniswami belonging to the Gounder community, the Indian Express noted, adding that the BJP believes “balancing caste representation is key to expanding its vote base” in the state.

Meanwhile, the DMK has characterised the AIADMK-BJP alliance as the “biggest betrayal” of Tamil Nadu’s people.