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The combined tally of the two rival blocs is over 126 seats, comfortably above the majority mark in the Tamil Nadu Assembly. But smaller allies are where complications arise.
Tamil Nadu caretaker Chief Minister MK Stalin leads the DMK, while Edappadi K Palaniswami heads the AIADMK. (Courtesy: PTI)
Even as speculations swirl about a possible merger of the two Dravidian giants in Tamil Nadu, the arithmetic behind a DMK-AIADMK alliance may not be as simple as it seems on paper. At a time when Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) is still struggling to convince the Governor that it has the magic number of 118 MLAs needed to form the government, rumors of a “Dravidian grand bargain” have naturally gained traction in political circles.
At first glance, the figures seem comfortable. The DMK alliance won 73 seats and the AIADMK alliance won 53 seats in the Tamil Nadu elections 2026. The combined tally of the two rival blocs is over 126 seats, comfortably above the majority mark in the Tamil Nadu Assembly. But politics, especially in Tamil Nadu, has rarely been about arithmetic alone.
The first complication is the change in the political landscape after the Congress abandoned the DMK-led alliance and extended its support to TVK earlier on Wednesday. That move drastically reduced the effective strength of the DMK bloc to 68 seats, weakening the cohesion of the alliance that once seemed stable. More importantly, any understanding between the DMK and the AIADMK would immediately run into ideological and alliance contradictions.
For the DMK, sharing space with the BJP would be politically difficult. The BJP, which won one seat, remains part of the AIADMK-led front, and the DMK has built much of its recent political messaging around opposition to the BJP’s centralizing policies and tendencies.
The contradictions do not end there.
Thol Thirumavalavan has already publicly indicated that the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), which won two seats, will not continue to be part of any alliance that includes the PMK. However, the PMK, which won four seats, is firmly aligned with the AIADMK bloc. That means that even if the top leaders of the DMK and AIADMK were willing to explore a deal, several smaller but influential allies could refuse to do so.
Meanwhile, the BJP is believed to have facilitated the inclusion of Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazagam (AMMK), led by TTV Dhinakaran, into the broader AIADMK camp. Therefore, the AMMK, which won one seat, would stay with the BJP, is what many believe.
This creates a major risk for the AIADMK. If he were to break ties with the BJP to strike a deal with the DMK, he could simultaneously lose all four PMK MLAs and the lone AMMK MLA. Once those figures are subtracted, the combined strength of the DMK and AIADMK blocs would fall to around 115, already below the majority mark of 118 seats.
And even that may not be the last hurdle.
In any government formation exercise, an MLA normally becomes Speaker and is effectively neutral during confidence votes, except in the event of a tie. Taking this into account, the operational strength of said combine would be further reduced: to 114.
Therefore, despite the rumors and dramatic optics that two historical rivals could come together, the path towards a DMK-AIADMK agreement remains politically and mathematically unstable.
However, the DMK has ruled out an alliance with the AIADMK for now, even as the AIADMK shifted 20 of its MLAs to a resort in Puducherry. DMK chief MK Stalin, while talking to The Times Of India, said that the DMK is willing to wait for Vijay to form a new government in the state and added that it will “watch undisturbed for six months”.
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