The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam will not form an alliance with any national party for the Lok Sabha elections, the party’s General Secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami said on Sunday, The Hindu reported.
The party had left the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance in September.
Its rival Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which is Tamil Nadu’s ruling party, is part of the Opposition INDIA bloc.
On Sunday, Palaniswami said that the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam will be part of a “special alliance”, details of which will be shared soon, The New Indian Express reported.
Palaniswami accused Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin of accumulating power for his family at the cost of the state's welfare.
“The DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam] government failed to get the state’s share of [Cauvery] river water from Karnataka,” he alleged, reported The New Indian Express. “MK Stalin was too weak to urge Karnataka, where its ally, the Congress, is ruling. The failure resulted in loss of kuruvai crop over lakhs of acres. The farmers are angry.”
Palaniswami also accused the state’s ruling party of neglecting minorities.
“Stalin is attempting minority outreach,” he said. “It is the AIADMK that has always stood with Muslims and Christians.”
The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam had severed ties with the BJP in September, days after it criticised the Hindutva party’s state unit president K Annamalai for his comments about former Chief Minister CN Annadurai.
In January, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader D Jayakumar told reporters that his party is holding seat-sharing talks with several parties for the Lok Sabha polls, adding that an announcement would be made in this regard at an appropriate time.
The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the BJP had formed an alliance in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, but faced a rout. The rival alliance comprising the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Congress and some smaller parties had won 38 of the 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu as well as the lone seat in Puducherry.
In the 2021 Tamil Nadu Assembly polls, while the AIADMK won just 66 of the state’s 234 seats, the BJP won four.
Also read: How an ideological battle led to the AIADMK-BJP split
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