The exodus of former AIADMK ministers to Vijay's Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam is driven less by star appeal than by the collapsed EPS-Velumani patch-up within AIADMK. According to ThePrint, the rift has left Velumani's loyalists — many from the electorally crucial Kongu belt — without patronage or position, making TVK a logical refuge and handing Vijay organisational infrastructure he could not have built alone.

The 5W+H: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How

  • Who: Former AIADMK ministers loyal to S.P. Velumani, AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami (EPS), and TVK founder-president Vijay.
  • What: Multiple former AIADMK ministers and senior functionaries have joined or are reportedly in talks to join Vijay's TVK, following the collapse of the EPS-Velumani reconciliation within AIADMK, as reported by ThePrint.
  • When: The defections have accelerated through 2025-2026, intensifying in recent weeks as the 2026 Tamil Nadu assembly elections approach.
  • Where: Tamil Nadu, with particular significance in the Kongu belt — the western Tamil Nadu region anchored by Coimbatore, Tiruppur, and Erode that was Velumani's stronghold.
  • Why: EPS's systematic consolidation of power within AIADMK marginalised Velumani and his loyalists, denying them organisational posts and ticket prospects, according to ThePrint. With no factional home inside AIADMK, these leaders found TVK a viable vehicle.
  • How: The patch-up between EPS and Velumani, brokered after AIADMK's 2024 Lok Sabha debacle, crumbled when EPS continued to deny Velumani's camp meaningful positions. Sidelined leaders began exploring TVK, which offered them both relevance and access to Vijay's mass base, as ThePrint reported.

A party does not bleed cadres when the wound is external. It bleeds when the surgeon is its own leader. And in AIADMK's case in 2026, the surgeon's name is Edappadi K. Palaniswami.

The headline, naturally, belongs to Vijay — Tamil cinema's biggest active star turning politician, whose Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam has been absorbing former AIADMK ministers at a pace that suggests something far more systematic than celebrity magnetism. But the real story, the one the press releases and photo-ops do not tell, is unfolding inside a party that once governed Tamil Nadu for over three decades. According to ThePrint, the crumbling of the EPS-Velumani patch-up within AIADMK is the engine driving this exodus — and it is handing TVK something money and stardom alone cannot buy: a ready-made political infrastructure in the most electorally consequential belt in western Tamil Nadu.

To understand why this matters, you need to understand the Kongu belt — and what S.P. Velumani meant to AIADMK inside it.

The Kongu Belt: AIADMK's Western Fortress, Now Cracking

The Kongu region — Coimbatore, Tiruppur, Erode, Salem, Namakkal, the Gounder-dominated heartland — has been AIADMK's most reliable vote bank for two decades. It delivered margins when the delta wavered, held firm when Chennai swung. And within this fortress, S.P. Velumani was not merely a minister; he was the de facto chieftain, the man who controlled booth-level networks, managed local patronage, and delivered results election after election. His tenure as municipal administration minister under Jayalalithaa and later under EPS gave him an infrastructure of loyalists that ran deeper than party membership rolls.

When AIADMK lost power in 2021 and then suffered a humiliating washout in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections — winning zero seats — the party needed unity more than ever. A patch-up between EPS and Velumani was brokered, reported widely at the time as a pragmatic truce. According to ThePrint's detailed account, that truce was always more optics than substance. EPS, having consolidated his position as AIADMK's undisputed general secretary after expelling O. Panneerselvam, had no structural incentive to share power with Velumani. The reconciliation, such as it was, offered Velumani's camp words but not posts.

And in Tamil Nadu's cadre-driven politics, posts are oxygen.

Political Pulse

The talk in AIADMK's Coimbatore circles — the corridors where Velumani's men once moved with the confidence of incumbency — is blunt and bitter. "EPS wants one-man rule, but he does not have the one-man appeal," is how one party veteran, speaking to reporters, framed the frustration. The whisper in western Tamil Nadu political circles, according to ThePrint's reporting, is that Velumani himself has not publicly broken with EPS, but his silence has become its own signal. His loyalists are not waiting for permission. They are reading the room — and the room says AIADMK under EPS offers them neither tickets for 2026 nor positions within the organisation.

The chatter among political analysts tracking the Kongu belt is even more pointed: Velumani's network was never just about one man. It was a web of municipal councillors, cooperative society heads, local business associations, and booth-level workers built over fifteen years. When those people move, they do not move alone. They carry voter rolls, local intelligence, and the kind of ground-game knowledge that no amount of cinema fan-club energy can replicate. The speculation in Tamil Nadu's political corridors is that TVK's leadership understands this perfectly — and that Vijay's camp has been quietly courting not just the big-name ex-ministers but the second and third tier of Velumani's apparatus.

(This reflects political corridor chatter and analyst speculation, not confirmed internal party decisions.)

What TVK Gets — and What It Still Lacks

For Vijay's TVK, the arithmetic is seductive. The party, founded in 2024, has mass enthusiasm but thin organisational depth — the classic problem of every star-politician's maiden vehicle. Fan clubs can fill rallies; they cannot run a polling booth at 6 AM on election day. What the AIADMK defectors bring is precisely what TVK lacks: experience in the mechanics of electoral democracy. District-level coordination, alliance management, last-mile voter mobilisation, the dull but decisive machinery of winning seats rather than just votes.

According to ThePrint, multiple former AIADMK ministers have already joined TVK, with more reportedly in advanced talks. The pattern is telling — these are not random defectors. They are disproportionately from western Tamil Nadu, from the networks Velumani built, from constituencies where AIADMK's organisational grip has loosened because the men who held it have been frozen out by EPS's inner circle.

India Herald's read of the deeper dynamic here is this: TVK is not poaching AIADMK. AIADMK is exporting its own talent — through the internal logic of a power consolidation that has made loyalty to EPS the only currency, and left everyone else looking for a new bank. Vijay's star power is the magnet, but the EPS-Velumani rift is the catapult.

EPS's Gamble — and AIADMK's Existential Risk

The strategic logic from EPS's side is not irrational. After years of dual leadership chaos — the EPS-OPS split nearly destroyed the party — Palaniswami clearly concluded that AIADMK needed a single, uncontested command. He expelled OPS, sidelined Velumani, and installed his own loyalists at every level. In theory, this creates discipline. In practice, it has created a party where anyone not in EPS's personal circle feels expendable — and in a multi-party state like Tamil Nadu, expendable leaders have options.

The existential risk for AIADMK is not that it loses a few ex-ministers. It is that it loses the Kongu belt's ground infrastructure to TVK, turning what was once a fortress into a contested battleground exactly when it can least afford it. With the DMK in power and a potential three-way split in the non-DMK vote between AIADMK, TVK, and BJP-allied forces, every percentage point of vote share matters. If TVK consolidates even 8-10% in the Kongu belt — plausible if Velumani's networks functionally shift — it could reduce AIADMK to third-place finishes in seats it once won by five-figure margins.

The irony is sharp enough to cut: EPS's quest for total control within AIADMK may be the single biggest gift to the party he most needs to destroy — TVK.

The Question Everyone in Tamil Nadu Politics Is Asking

Does Velumani eventually walk? That is the unspoken question hanging over every one of these defections. As of now, he remains nominally within AIADMK. But every loyalist who leaves weakens the argument for staying and strengthens the argument that the infrastructure he built is being reassembled elsewhere — under a different flag, with a younger, more charismatic face at the top.

If Velumani makes a formal break, it would not merely be a defection. It would be a partition — the Kongu belt's organisational spine separating from AIADMK's body. And in Tamil Nadu's history, such partitions have precedents: when MGR left the DMK, he did not just take his stardom. He took the machinery that knew how to convert stardom into seats. The parallel is not exact, but the principle is identical.

What the rest of the coverage has missed, and what India Herald's assessment of the trajectory suggests, is this: the 2026 Tamil Nadu assembly election may be decided not by what Vijay says on stage, but by what EPS did in the back rooms of his own party — the slow, methodical alienation of the one man whose ground network in western Tamil Nadu was irreplaceable. Every ex-minister who crosses over to TVK is not a convert to Vijay's ideology. They are a refugee from EPS's consolidation. And refugees, when they arrive in sufficient numbers, do not just join the new country. They reshape it.

The question Tamil Nadu's political class should be asking is not whether TVK can win. It is whether AIADMK, under EPS's one-man rule, can survive the civil war it started with itself.

By the Numbers

  • AIADMK won zero Lok Sabha seats in the 2024 general elections — its worst-ever parliamentary performance, which precipitated the factional crisis now benefiting TVK.
  • The Kongu belt encompasses roughly 40-50 assembly constituencies in western Tamil Nadu, making it one of the most electorally dense regions in the state.

Key Takeaways

  • The EPS-Velumani patch-up within AIADMK has effectively collapsed, with EPS denying Velumani's camp meaningful organisational posts despite a post-2024 reconciliation attempt, according to ThePrint.
  • Former AIADMK ministers — disproportionately from the Kongu belt — are joining TVK, bringing not just names but booth-level electoral infrastructure that Vijay's party critically lacks.
  • If TVK consolidates even 8-10% of the vote in western Tamil Nadu using Velumani's old networks, it could reduce AIADMK to third-place finishes in historically safe constituencies ahead of the 2026 assembly elections.
  • The deeper dynamic is not TVK poaching AIADMK but AIADMK exporting its own talent through a power consolidation that rewards personal loyalty to EPS above all else.
  • Whether S.P. Velumani himself formally breaks with AIADMK remains the single most consequential unanswered question in Tamil Nadu opposition politics.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are former AIADMK ministers joining Vijay's TVK?

According to ThePrint, the collapse of the EPS-Velumani reconciliation within AIADMK has left Velumani's loyalists without organisational posts or ticket prospects. With no factional home inside AIADMK, these experienced leaders — many from the Kongu belt — are finding TVK a viable political vehicle that offers both relevance and access to Vijay's mass base.

What is the EPS-Velumani rift in AIADMK?

After AIADMK's 2024 Lok Sabha washout, a patch-up was brokered between general secretary Edappadi Palaniswami and senior leader S.P. Velumani. However, as ThePrint reported, EPS continued to deny Velumani's camp meaningful positions within the party, effectively marginalising them. This broke the truce and triggered the current exodus of Velumani-aligned leaders.

How does the AIADMK split affect the 2026 Tamil Nadu assembly elections?

The defection of Kongu belt leaders to TVK threatens to split the non-DMK vote in western Tamil Nadu. If TVK consolidates even 8-10% in this region using the organisational networks these defectors bring, AIADMK could be reduced to third-place finishes in constituencies it once dominated, potentially benefiting the ruling DMK.

Will S.P. Velumani leave AIADMK and join TVK?

As of now, Velumani remains nominally within AIADMK and has not publicly broken with EPS. However, political analysts note that his silence has become a signal in itself, and every loyalist who leaves further weakens the case for his staying. Whether he formally defects remains the most consequential unanswered question in Tamil Nadu opposition politics.

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Dr. Kotii Reddy Saripalli

03/07/2026 07:40 AM