Chennai: The DMK, which headed the Secular Progressive Alliance in Tamil Nadu since 2017, scoring impressive Lok Sabha poll victories in 2019 and 2024 as well as placing itself in the forefront of issues relating to state autonomy and federal rights, is today in unenviable position. After the Tamil Nadu electorate delivered a fractured mandate in the recent Assembly elections, actor and Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam founder C Joseph Vijay, has through deft political moves alienated the DMK from its allies and ascended the throne of Chief Ministership.
The DMK, which has faced every election since December 2017 in the company of the Congress, CPI, CPI-M, VCK, IUML and a few other parties, is suddenly left with hardly any significant ally. Vijay, whose fledgling party had won 108 seats, got a big boost first when the Congress unceremoniously ditched its long-term ally and rushed to support the TVK.
Thereafter the two Left parties, VCK and IUML, extended outside support to the TVK helping it to form the Government. These parties, which had the courtesy of taking their decision after keeping the DMK informed, had argued that if they did not back the TVK then President’s Rule could be imposed in the State thereby allowing the BJP to rule by proxy.
However, Vijay has since convinced the VCK and IUML to join his Government. With the inclusion of two Congress legislators in his Cabinet on Thursday and swearing in of a nominee each of the VCK and IUML on Friday, Vijay has completed the process of forming Tamil Nadu’s first true coalition government.
The result, however, is that the DMK, the chief architect of an anti-BJP front and once a strong advocate of projecting the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi as Prime Minister candidate, today stands almost politically isolated in the Dravidian State. If the MDMK and Manithaneya Makkal Katchi (MMK) have not abandoned the DMK, it is because their candidates were elected on the DMK’s ‘Rising Sun’ symbol. Its most recent ally, the DMDK, has not switched sides because the TVK did not extend an olive branch to it.
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Now perhaps the MMK too is ruing its decision. On Friday it declared that it would contest future elections only on its own symbol.
“The political churn and realignment now only indicates the two-year-old TVK has now occupied the DMK’s space as an anti-BJP anchor for a political front in Tamil Nadu, irrespective of the party not being vocal in its criticism of the saffron brigade,” says a political analyst.
The bigger question now is if this newly formed coalition succeeds and stays intact for a longer period, then in 2029, Tamil Nadu might witness another churn before the Lok Sabha polls. Does that mean the DMK for its political survival might be forced to court the BJP? A million dollar question indeed.
