Velumani blames Annamalai, says AIADMK-BJP alliance would have won 35-40 seats

AIADMK and BJP engage in verbal duel over election results, blaming each other for alliance breakup and electoral losses.

Days after the rout in the Lok Sabha poll in Tamil Nadu, erstwhile allies AIADMK and BJP were on Thursday engaged in a verbal duel over the results and the cause for snapping of ties between them last year.

AIADMK Coimbatore satrap and former Minister S. P. Velumani blamed BJP State president K. Annamalai for the parting of ways and claimed had the alliance remained in tact, it could have easily won 35 to 40 seats in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. He told journalists that while the BJP past State presidents were cordial, Mr. Annamalai had made critical remarks against former Chief Ministers C. N. Annadurai and Jayalalithaa and AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami while being in an alliance. This had led to the AIADMK exiting the NDA.

He expressed the hope that the AIADMK’s fortunes would be revived in the 2026 Assembly election.

Asked about this, Mr. Annamalai alleged that the reality was people had rejected the AIADMK. He felt Mr. Velumani’s remarks indicated an intra-party tussle between the former Minister and Mr. Palaniswami.

On Mr. Velumani’s claim that the alliance could have scored a big victory, Mr. Annamalai said though the BJP had allied with the AIADMK during the 2019 parliamentary poll, when the latter was the ruling party, the alliance suffered a “historic loss” in Tamil Nadu, though the BJP had nationally won 303 seats.

He pointed out that the AIADMK had walked out of the alliance contending it was compelled to play along with the BJP’s policies and this had alienated certain section of voters. “When it could not win a single seat alone, how could it have won if it had an alliance with the BJP?” he asked.

“One message from the election this year is that people have rejected the AIADMK,” he said. The AIADMK has its MLAs in all the assembly segments in Coimbatore. Yet, it got very less votes in three of these segments. People had rejected the opportunistic politics of the AIADMK, he said.