Vijay’s rapid rise has terrified Tamil Nadu’s traditional power centres, with both DMK and AIADMK fearing their decades-old vote banks may never return if TVK successfully forms a government.
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Nobody saw this coming. Not really. Sure, there were whispers about TVK’s growing momentum, a few optimistic poll trackers here and there, some cautious chatter among journalists who cover Chennai’s political beat. But when the votes were counted on May 4, 2026, and Vijay’s two-year-old party had walked away with 108 seats in a 234-member assembly, beating both the DMK and AIADMK. Tamil Nadu’s old political class went into a kind of collective shock. Then, very quickly, into damage-control mode.
What has unfolded since is a masterclass in how entrenched power responds when genuinely threatened. Not with dignity. Not with deference to the mandate. But with back-room calls, resort politics, a convenient Governor, and the most unlikely of partnerships. Two parties that have spent six decades treating each other as mortal enemies, now quietly exploring whether they can come together to shut out the new guy.
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The numbers from the 2026 Tamil Nadu elections deserve to be read slowly, because each one carries the weight of decades of political history.
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DMK, the party of MK Stalin, that swept 159 seats just five years ago, came back with 59. The AIADMK, which fancied itself a credible opposition, won 47. Together, the two Dravidian giants who have alternated power in this state since 1967 couldn’t even cross the majority mark on their own. Meanwhile, a party that didn’t exist before February 2024 became the single largest force in the assembly.
Stalin lost Kolathur, his own seat, a constituency he had won three times in a row. That image, of the sitting Chief Minister conceding defeat in his own backyard, captures perhaps better than any statistic what happened to the DMK on polling day. He resigned on May 5. The next day, Vijay walked into the Governor’s office and staked his claim.
And that’s when the maneuvering began.
Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar is a BJP appointee. He did what BJP appointees in opposition-ruled states have historically done. He found procedural reasons to slow things down. When Vijay met him on May 6 to stake his claim, Arlekar reportedly asked him to produce letters of support from 118 MLAs. Vijay’s party had 108 confirmed seats. With five Congress MLAs now backing him, he was at 113. Five short. Close, but not close enough for the Governor to act.
The security detail assigned to Vijay as Chief Minister-designate was then quietly withdrawn.
Congress reacted with fury. Their state unit called it a constitutional affront. “Governments are not decided on the lawns of Raj Bhavan,” the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee said. Protests were announced across district headquarters. The party’s Karur MP Jothimani told reporters the Governor “should stop playing politics via the Raj Bhavan.”
But the delay had served its purpose. Every additional day without a formal government gave the old Dravidian parties more room to manoeuvre.
Here is the central absurdity of post-poll Tamil Nadu 2026. Two parties that built their entire political identities in opposition to each other are now the subject of serious speculation about a joint government.
From May 7 onwards, reports began circulating that the DMK and AIADMK were in quiet talks. Together, they would command 106 seats, enough, with even marginal outside support, to form a majority and shut TVK out entirely. The DMK denied it publicly, putting out statements about respecting the mandate and choosing to sit in opposition. But political denials in Tamil Nadu are rarely taken at face value.
There was also the resort politics subplot that always accompanies Indian hung assembly situations. Around 28 of the AIADMK’s 47 MLAs were reportedly moved to a resort in Puducherry. This is a familiar tactic used when party leaderships want to keep legislators away from poaching attempts, but also a sign that there was genuine fear of a split within the AIADMK ranks.
A section of these MLAs, according to multiple reports, was willing to support Vijay. Edappadi K Palaniswami, the AIADMK’s general secretary, was said to be personally opposed to any accommodation with TVK. This meant the resort wasn’t just about protecting against DMK overtures. It was also about keeping his own flock together.
The AIADMK’s internal fracture is, in a way, the most telling detail in this entire crisis. A party whose leader is so threatened by the prospect of Vijay’s success that he’d rather strand his MLAs in Puducherry than risk them switching sides, that is a party whose credibility among its own people is already in question.
Strip away the post-poll arithmetic and what you’re really looking at is an existential crisis for Dravidian politics.
Vijay didn’t just win votes. He took voters that the DMK and AIADMK had long treated as their own captive constituencies. Young voters, urban voters, women, first-time voters. He showed them another option. He did it without a caste calculus, without decades of organisational infrastructure, and without the welfare machinery that governments use to build loyalty. And, he did it with a party that was barely two years old, running solo in 233 constituencies, against the full weight of both establishment parties.
Before the election, Vijay had been blunt about his intentions. At his party’s second state conference in Madurai, he compared the trajectory he intended to follow with the DMK’s rise in 1967 and the AIADMK’s in 1977. He called Stalin “Uncle” in a way that was simultaneously affectionate and devastating. He called the DMK his “only political enemy” and the BJP his “ideological enemy,” which was a careful formulation that gave himself room to work with the Left while closing the door on saffron politics.
The AIADMK, for its part, had spent months watching its vote bank drain toward TVK. Vijay had specifically targeted AIADMK workers, telling them their leadership had abandoned MGR’s legacy. Many listened. The AIADMK’s 47 seats are almost certainly fewer than what they would have got if TVK hadn’t eaten into their base so aggressively.
Both parties understood, then and now, that if Vijay forms a government and delivers, even partially, their combined relevance in Tamil Nadu is finished. This isn’t ordinary political competition. This is survival.
On May 8, the CPI and CPI(M) announced they would provide unconditional outside support to TVK. Their reasoning was stated plainly that if no government was formed before the assembly’s tenure ended on May 10, President’s Rule would kick in, effectively handing the BJP indirect control over Tamil Nadu. For the Left, that was a red line. Supporting Vijay, even a Vijay they had no particular ideological affinity with, was preferable to a BJP proxy regime via Central control.
The VCK’s Thol Thirumavalavan, who holds two seats, publicly condemned the Governor’s delay and appeared to be moving in the same direction. The IUML separately confirmed support to TVK. The Congress moved its five MLAs to Hyderabad for safekeeping, to be brought back to Chennai the moment the Governor formally issued an invitation to Vijay.
The walls of the Dravidian obstruction strategy were closing in.
Tamil Nadu has seen political drama before. It invented some of the finest versions of it. But this is different.
What the 2026 verdict exposed is that the social contract between the Dravidian parties and Tamil voters, built over two generations on caste networks, welfare distribution, and cultural ownership of Tamil identity, is no longer sufficient on its own. Voters, especially younger ones, want something that neither the DMK’s rationalist inheritance nor the AIADMK’s MGR nostalgia can deliver.
Tamil Nadu voted. It voted clearly. A party that didn’t exist two years ago is now the largest in the assembly, and its leader won from two constituencies at once. The people of Tamil Nadu, at a record 85.1% turnout. The question now is whether the political establishment with all its decades of experience, all its institutional levers, all its back-room networks will find a way to say: we heard you. Or whether it will, once again, find a way to say: nice try.
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