It all came to a head on May 25, 2026, when three from the AIADMK left the Assembly to make over to the ruling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam. M K Stalin didn’t mince words, calling it ‘horse trading at horse speed’ and putting out a warning that this kind of turnover could well upend the opposition and force some hasty bypolls.
What put the charge of horse trading on the table
You had P Sathyabama, Maragatham Kumaravel and S Jayakumar put in their papers. They were the ones who propped up C Joseph Vijay’s government in the confidence vote back on the 13th. Once they were out, you could find them with Minister Aadhav Arjuna at the Secretariat; they’ll be making it official with TVK in Panayur before long.
Stalin put it down to a three-act: you get your allies in line, you do some hardball with an AIADMK or AMMK MLA in the trust vote, then you stage the resignations and induct them right there in the Secretariat. He was having none of their ‘Force of Purity’ talk, saying they’ve shown their true colours as a ‘Force of Misery’.
Assembly Speaker JCD Prabhakar was only too ready to take the letters, and with that, the AIADMK is down to 44 in the 234-member House from 47. It’s a thinning of the opposition ranks and means we can expect some fresh tussles for those open seats.
AIADMK has a different story
Edappadi K Palaniswami, the general secretary, is calling it what it is: a 'pre-planned conspiracy‘. His version is that while the Speaker was in the ground floor of the Secretariat accepting the papers, a minister was up on the first floor handing over membership cards. “That’s horse-trading,” he says.
He doesn’t think this kind of ‘fraud job’ fits with how we do things in Tamil Nadu and has put out a message that the party will put up with no more ‘back-stabbings’. In a not-so-subtle dig, he pointed out that some of these MLAs are where they are because the public said no to the ‘cinema star’s symbol’, and the voters would be along to set the record straight in due time.
The reason for the ruckus now
The AIADMK has been at odds since the April 23 election. You have one side with Palaniswami and another with C Ve Shanmugam and S P Velumani. The three who have left were part of the 25 from the Shanmugam-Velumani fold who lent their support to the TVK in the confidence motion.
But the other side is making a move of its own. Five from the rebel wing have come back to Palaniswami as of Monday, bringing his tally to 27. They’ve been to the Speaker with a letter to make it clear they’re under his command. It’s a tug-of-war for the opposition benches, plain and simple.
Now that the resignations are in, we’re looking at bypolls in Madurantakam, Dharapuram and Perundurai. There’s also the matter of Tiruchirappalli East, which has been open since Vijay put two in the bag and left. Every one of these is a chance for the electorate to weigh in on the way loyalties are changing here.
Where the Speaker stands
Prabhakar has made it known he’s in the business of seeing if the rules of the House are followed, nothing more. But for DMK MP P Wilson, the optics are all wrong. He’s of the view that in the space of 21 days, you have three elected men with defection charges on their heads who have put in their notice and walked right into the TVK’s arms at the Secretariat to get around the law.
It was a day for strong words from both sides:
– Stalin: ‘horse trading’ and fast at that
– EPS: a ‘conspiracy’ hatched in the Secretariat
– The Speaker: I check for compliance, that’s my job
– P Wilson: 21 days to skirt the law
Then there’s the misinformation angle
R S Bharathi of the DMK is using the term ‘Aya Ram Gaya Ram’ for what’s happening. He says the TVK has been busy on social media, with a phony ID made up by a girl, to put the DMK and Udhayanidhi in the same sentence as a Coimbatore murder.
Bharathi is threatening to take it to court. A run-of-the-mill defamation case is two years in jail, but if you use a fake identity for a false cause, he says you could be looking at life. He’s even put out a word to parents to keep an eye on their kids.
He’s also put in a word about the rise in crime since the TVK got in office and how the ruling party is trying to put a spin on things. And on the national front, Stalin has had a go at the Congress for being hypocritical in their so-called anti-BJP stance after the conditions they put on the NDA in the past.
In the end, the score is what it is: three empty seats, a few bypolls to be had, and a question of whether the TVK can hold its ground with the courts and the people. The next few weeks will tell us not just how the numbers add up in the Assembly, but who in this state has any real standing.
