PMK drifts towards Vijay, but BJP’s signals remain key

The emerging political courtship between Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) and the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) has reached an unusual stage. The conversations appear serious enough for Cabinet positions to be discussed, but the PMK may still need to settle matters with the BJP before anything can be formalised.

The PMK entered the 2026 Assembly election as part of the AIADMK-BJP alliance, with the Anbumani Ramadoss-led faction allotted 18 constituencies. It has since chosen not to support any party in the October 6 Madurantakam and Dharapuram by-elections – a decision particularly significant in Madurantakam, where its Vanniyar support could have strengthened the AIADMK against an increasingly confident TVK.

Behind that neutrality, according to top TVK sources, is a larger conversation.

Talks between the two sides are being conducted principally through Anbumani and John Arockiasamy, Vijay’s political adviser, according to senior leaders familiar with the negotiations. The relationship is not new. Arockiasamy worked on the PMK’s political strategy during the 2016 Assembly election, when Anbumani was projected as the party’s chief ministerial candidate under the “Maatram, Munnetram, Anbumani” campaign.

What began as political contact has now moved into discussions about how the PMK might fit into the ruling arrangement, TVK sources said.

One proposal being discussed would give the PMK two places in Vijay’s Cabinet – one to Sowmiya Anbumani, Anbumani’s wife and the PMK’s floor leader in the Assembly, and another to party MLA A Ganesh Kumar, sources said. Reports of a possible Cabinet berth for Sowmiya after the by-elections have separately circulated in recent days, though no formal announcement has been made.

Sowmiya brings something particularly useful to such negotiations – an electoral mandate of her own. She won the Dharmapuri seat with 93,713 votes, defeating the TVK candidate by 20,896 votes.

‘Incomplete victory’ challenges

For Vijay, the negotiations are part of a larger problem created by his extraordinary but incomplete victory.

The TVK won 108 of Tamil Nadu’s 234 seats in the last Assembly polls, 10 short of the majority mark, and formed the government with support from smaller parties. Subsequent resignations by AIADMK legislators have created by-elections and opened another route for Vijay to strengthen his position.

A senior TVK leader involved in the discussions said the by-election results would therefore determine the tone of the next round of negotiations. A comfortable TVK victory would allow Vijay to negotiate from greater strength. A weaker performance would increase the value of every outside legislator  and, consequently, the bargaining power of the PMK.

That is where arithmetic becomes sociology. TVK leaders involved in the discussions consider the PMK particularly valuable because its core Vanniyar constituency remains concentrated across significant parts of northern Tamil Nadu and pockets elsewhere. Unlike the state’s Dalit electorate, which consists of several communities distributed unevenly across regions and represented by more than one political formation, the PMK has spent decades building a recognisable political constituency around Vanniyar mobilisation.

PMK-VCK dilemma

The distinction is important because bringing the PMK into Vijay’s coalition could place another ally, the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), in perhaps the most uncomfortable position.

Tamil Nadu’s major alliances have historically struggled to accommodate the VCK and PMK together for sustained periods, partly because their respective political constituencies have confronted each other in some of the state’s most sensitive caste conflicts.

TVK leaders nevertheless believe the VCK would find leaving Vijay more difficult than remaining alongside the PMK.

“For VCK, going out of our alliance would be difficult because it may become an exit of the party leadership, not necessarily its supporters,” a senior TVK leader said, arguing that the election already showed significant Dalit support moving directly towards Vijay.

VCK leaders, according to people familiar with its internal discussions, are themselves conscious of the possibility that parts of their traditional electoral constituency are developing an independent relationship with TVK. The party, moreover, has already entered government and holds a Cabinet position.

The Left tangle

The Left presents a different problem. TVK leaders expect the Communist parties to move further away if the PMK formally enters Vijay’s coalition. That separation has already begun: the CPI and CPI(M) have said they are not part of the TVK alliance and are contesting the by-elections independently.

This produces an alliance puzzle of the sort Tamil Nadu politics specialises in. Vijay can potentially strengthen his government by adding the PMK while simultaneously making parts of the coalition that helped him form it less comfortable.

For Anbumani, however, the hardest conversation may not be with Vijay, the VCK or even the AIADMK. It may be with the BJP.

The PMK fought the April election as part of the AIADMK-BJP front, and its relationship with the BJP extends beyond a single election. A formal shift into Vijay’s camp would therefore represent more than a local rearrangement after a by-election. It would alter a relationship within the Opposition bloc and require the PMK to decide how much political distance it is prepared to create from the BJP.

For now, the PMK has chosen the most useful position available in politics – the fence.