All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief Edappadi K Palaniswami on Wednesday said that his party’s newly-formed alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party was only for the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, Deccan Herald reported. There would be no coalition government if the alliance wins the polls, he added.

Palaniswami’s remarks came after Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday said that the BJP and the AIADMK would contest the Assembly elections in an alliance.

Speaking at a press conference in Chennai alongside Palaniswami, Shah said the two parties would fight the polls as part of the National Democratic Alliance under Palaniswami’s leadership.

“AIADMK and BJP leaders have decided that AIADMK, BJP and all the alliance parties will contest the upcoming Vidhan Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu together as NDA,” Shah said.

He added that the AIADMK had not made demands or placed conditions for reviving the alliance.

This marked a renewed partnership between the BJP and AIADMK, who have had a turbulent alliance history.

On Wednesday, Palaniswami told reporters that the two parties would fight the elections together.

However, on a question about why the AIADMK agreed to form a government with the BJP, Deccan Herald quoted the former chief minister as saying: “He [Shah] never said it will be a coalition government. You people have misunderstood what he said and made it a huge issue.”

The Union home minister had never said that the BJP would seek a share in the government, Palaniswami added.

Shah made it clear that the NDA would be headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the national level and by the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, the former chief minister said. “He was very categorical on this,” Palaniswami added.

The AIADMK chief said that his party inducted the BJP into its alliance to ensure that the votes against the state’s ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam did not get split, Deccan Herald reported.

“Why should they [DMK] worry about whom we ally with?” the newspaper quoted Palaniswami as saying. “What’s their concern?”

On Friday, Shah also confirmed that MLA Nainar Nagenthiran will replace K Annamalai as the Tamil Nadu BJP chief. His was the only nomination that the state BJP unit received for the post, he added.

The AIADMK and the BJP had previously been coalition partners at the Centre between 1998 and 1999, and for the 2004 Lok Sabha polls. The AIADMK, however, did not rejoin the BJP-led alliance when the Hindutva party returned to power at the Centre in 2014.

The parties formally aligned ahead of the 2019 general elections, with the AIADMK leading the state-level coalition. They continued their alliance into the 2021 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections but parted ways in 2023 following disagreements over leadership and seat sharing.

Also read: How an ideological battle led to the AIADMK-BJP split