BJP PLANS ENHANCED COOPERATION WITH AIADMK, POST JAYA

BJP sources are categorical that their party will not let the AIADMK split into various units.

The Bharatiya Janata Party is trying to get into a system of “enhanced cooperation” with the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) to get a foothold in Tamil Nadu politics, post the demise of state Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa.

The BJP believes that Dravidian politics, which has held sway in the state for 50 years, is slowly losing its grip on Tamil Nadu and political space is gradually getting created for national parties— the BJP specifically. The Congress, another national party, has lost the pockets of influence it had in Tamil Nadu. The BJP has been trying to get a foothold in Tamil Nadu for a long time. It wanted to forge an alliance with the AIADMK ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and later the Assembly elections this year, but J. Jayalalithaa did not show any interest, although she kept on supporting the BJP-led NDA government on many occasions in Parliament.

According to a BJP leader, the political vacuum created after her death, coupled with another political force, DMK’s internal rifts, gives the party an opportunity to make inroads in the state. DMK is in a bad shape. Its patriarch M. Karunanidhi is 93 years old, and the party is torn between two primary factions, one headed by his younger son M.K. Stalin, the successor to the “throne”, and another led by elder son M.K. Alagiri. The Congress, on the other hand, does not