The internal rift and the churning within the AIADMK continued on Tuesday with Ambasamudram MLA Esaki Subbaiah tendering his resignation to the assembly speaker, only to join the ruling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) in the evening. Subbaiah’s resignation has taken the total count to four even as five other MLAs from the opposite camp moved back to the parent body controlled by its leader Edappadi K. Palaniswami (EPS).
Subbaiah is the fourth MLA to resign, thus bringing down the party’s strength in the assembly from 47 to 43. And out of these 43 MLAs, 27 are with party general secretary EPS while 16 others have aligned with the rebel faction led by S.P. Velumani and C.Ve. Shanmugam. While the four MLAs who resigned were part of the rebel faction earlier, five others have already moved to the EPS camp.
The rebel camp led by Velumani, which was looking strong till a week before has imploded now with a few of them moving to the TVK and a few others getting back to the EPS camp. Incidentally EPS has already given a legal representation to the speaker of the assembly J.C.D. Prabhakar, urging him not to accept the resignations of the rebel MLAs. The EPS camp argued that the anti-defection proceedings against the rebel MLAs were already pending.
“We will move the court if the speaker fails to properly scrutinise the resignations. If there is no solution to this issue from the speaker, then we will take the legal route,” Thalavai N. Sundaram told THE WEEK. However, speaker Prabhakar said that he was acting strictly based on the legal framework. “I only work within the legal framework and my job is to see if the letters are appropriate,” Prabhakar told the media after taking the resignation letters from the MLAs.
While DMK leader M.K. Stalin accused the ruling TVK of “horse trading”, AIADMK’s EPS called it as a “pre-planned conspiracy.” However with four MLAs resigning the number of vacant seats in the state assembly has increased to five, including the Trichy East constituency vacated by chief minister Vijay. All the five assembly segments are likely to go for bypolls within the next six months.
Vijay’s victory and the factional divide within the AIADMK
The victory of C. Joseph Vijay’s TVK in the May 2026 assembly elections has done more than just shift the treasury benches. It has permanently dismantled the traditional dravidian bipolarity on one side and cannibalised the AIADMK’s base on the other side. TVK has stripped the AIADMK of its status as the primary alternative to the DMK. The AIADMK is no longer a contender for power, but it has been relegated to a distant third, struggling for relevance in a political landscape that has moved on from the two leaves.
The current rot is a logical progression of EPS’s strategic myopia. Under his leadership style, the party seems to have collapsed to a historic low of 47 seats—a devastating drop from the 66 secured in 2021. This alienation was most profound among the core female vote bank, who saw in chief minister Vijay a more charismatic and stable alternative to the constant factional infighting of the AIADMK. The failure to project anything beyond EPS’s personal survival has turned the party's internal fractures into an unmanageable crisis.
The post-election fallout saw an immediate insurrection led by former ministers S.P. Velumani and C.Ve. Shanmugam. Their strategic intent was a desperate form of political pragmatism – attempting to trade their legislative strength for survival. By backing the TVK government, the rebels hoped to secure cabinet berths and more crucially, political immunity from the ongoing corruption probes.
During the May 13 trust vote, 25 AIADMK MLAs openly defied the party whip to support the TVK government. This move was fuelled by the smoking gun of ideological betrayal, accusations that EPS had attempted a backchannel deal with the DMK to survive the TVK surge. Rebel leaders characterised EPS as the ultimate hypocrite, alleging he was willing to align with the eternal foe, i.e., DMK just to keep his hold on the party apparatus. This perceived betrayal provided the moral cover for a split that had been simmering for years.
The rebellion faced immediate humiliation when Vijay publicly cold-shouldered the group. Despite their support during the trust vote, Vijay excluded the rebels from the TVK cabinet. Strategically, Vijay recognised that the AIADMK rebels were a liability and inducting the tainted figures like Velumani and Vijayabaskar will destroy the TVK’s anti-corruption branding.
The rebel MLAs led by Velumani and Shanmugam are now trapped in a strategic bottleneck caused by the 32-MLA threshold. Under the anti-defection law, the rebels required one-third of the original 123-member party strength (32 MLAs) to avoid disqualification. With only 25 original rebels, they remain legally vulnerable. The speaker holds the power of disqualification, leaving the group in a high-stakes limbo. The resignation of four key legislators—Maragatham Kumaravel (Maduranthakam), Sathyabama (Dharapuram), and S. Jayakumar (Perundurai) and Essaki Subbaiah (Ambasamudram)—has gutted the party’s presence in the Dravidian land.