Published Sep 17, 2026 | 4:48 PM ⚊ Updated Sep 17, 2026 | 4:57 PM
Image used for representational purpose. (AI generated Image)
Synopsis: Two AIADMK legislators who won their seats in May resigned within weeks and joined the ruling TVK. Now, the CPI and CPM, which prop up the Vijay government from outside, have decided to contest against the TVK’s own nominees. With the upcoming bypolls turning into a five-cornered contest, the bigger question is whether switching parties should keep working in Tamil Nadu, or start costing something.
Tamil Nadu is four months into a new government, and it is already headed for a test that nobody quite asked for.
On October 6, voters in Maduranthakam and Dharapuram will pick their MLAs for the second time in less than half a year. The reason? Two AIADMK legislators who won their seats in May resigned within weeks and joined the ruling TVK.
Now, the CPI and CPM, who prop up the Vijay government from outside, have decided to contest against the TVK’s own nominees. What was already an awkward bypoll has turned into a five-cornered contest involving the TVK, DMK, AIADMK, the Left, and NTK. There is a lot to unpack here, and most of it is not flattering to anyone involved.
Let us start with the Left. The CPM’s decision to fight from Maduranthakam and the CPI’s from Dharapuram is easy to respect on principle. They have said plainly that they cannot be seen endorsing a government that encourages elected MLAs to defect and then rewards them with the very ticket they abandoned. That is a fair position. Horse-trading in the guise of public service deserves to be called out, and it matters that a party still inside the ruling coalition’s support structure is willing to say so instead of grumbling in private.
But it is worth asking if this is only about principle. The Left has spent years fighting Tamil Nadu elections as a junior partner inside a bigger front when its vote share folded into someone else’s tally. Contesting alone, even in a bypoll it cannot win, lets the CPI and CPM show voters and their own cadre that they still exist as independent parties with their own base, rather than as a permanent add-on to the DMK. That is not a criticism. Parties are allowed to protect their own political space. But it means the stand is doing two jobs at once: protesting against defection and helping the Left rebuild itself. The second job matters just as much as the first.
Either way, the CPI and CPM are not going to win these seats. Their vote share here has been marginal for years, and one bypoll will not change that. So the real question is not whether the Left wins, but whose votes it will take away. The Left’s core voters in Tamil Nadu have mostly voted for the party that led the secular front at the time, which in recent years meant the DMK.
If that pattern holds even loosely, the Left’s entry hurts the DMK more than anyone else. It could be drawing away exactly the voters the DMK would otherwise count on. The AIADMK may actually be the least affected. Its own voter base is quite separate from the Left’s. So, a split among the other side’s voters helps AIADMK by accident, not because it has done anything to earn it.
The NTK is worth watching as well. Seeman’s party usually draws young, anti-establishment voters tired of all the mainstream parties, and with the Left also positioning itself as an outsider this time, the two may end up splitting that same pool of protest votes rather than adding to it.
How much any of this matters depends on how close the fight in these seats already is.
In May, AIADMK’s Maragatham Kumaravel won Maduranthakam by just over 7,000 votes, with the TVK and DMK candidates barely 2,000 votes apart for second place. A contest that close can be moved by a few thousand votes going anywhere. So, the Left and NTK splitting off even a modest share could change who comes second or third, though the winner will still likely be TVK, DMK, or AIADMK.
Dharapuram is a different story. There, the AIADMK’s Sathyabama won by close to 17,000 votes, a much wider gap. A five-way split is less likely to scramble that result. So the “how much does a five-cornered fight change the equation” answer is not the same for both seats. It is worth watching them separately rather than as one combined story.
Now, to the voters, who did not ask for any of this. They elected two MLAs in May. Those MLAs quit within a month, joined the party running the government, and got renominated for the same seats they had just left.
The bypoll exists purely because of that sequence. It costs the government money; it costs the Election Commission staff and effort; it costs candidates and party workers weeks of campaigning; and it costs ordinary voters time and attention they have already given once this year. Who is responsible for that waste? Two parties. The MLAs who quit treated their seats as personal property they could trade. And the TVK created the incentive for that trade by readily accepting the defectors and handing them the same ticket back. The Left’s objection on this one point is hard to argue with.
So should voters punish the ruling party and the defectors for this? That is really for each voter to decide, but the choice is simple enough. A vote for the TVK nominee tells every other sitting legislator watching that switching parties costs nothing. A vote against tells them it does. Voters may not necessarily think about it in these terms; many will vote on local roads, water, caste loyalty, or plain habit, as they always do. But if there was ever a bypoll where “teach them a lesson” made real sense, this is it.
What also makes this moment different from a routine bypoll is that Tamil Nadu has not seen this exact situation before. Past bypolls have usually followed a death, as in Erode East last year, or a court case, or some other genuine vacancy, and parties have often chosen to sit out rather than fight them hard. This one is different on both counts. It exists only because a government welcomed defectors and gave them their old seats back. Two of the parties supporting the government are now contesting against it because of this instead of staying quiet. That combination has not happened before in the state.
This is why these two results will mean more than who represents two constituencies, though it is worth being careful not to overread them. If the TVK’s renominated defectors win comfortably in both seats, it will be read, fairly or not, as voters accepting the defection with no real cost. If they lose one or both, or win by much smaller margins than in May, it will be read as a warning to other legislators thinking of jumping ship. Given how tight Maduranthakam already is and how wide Dharapuram already is, the two seats may send different signals rather than one clean verdict, and that itself would be worth watching, since it would suggest voters are weighing this issue seat by seat rather than treating it as one big referendum on defection.
None of the parties in this fight looks particularly good right now. Not the TVK, which created this situation. Not the AIADMK, which lost these two seats once when its legislators defected, and now risks losing them a second time in the bypoll. Not even the Left, whose stand is principled but is also, in part, about their own survival as an independent force.
The voters in these two seats are the only ones with something real to decide: whether switching parties for personal convenience should keep working in Tamil Nadu, or whether it should start costing something. That is worth more thought than most bypolls usually get, and the two results, read together, will demonstrate more about the answer than either one alone.
Also Read:
Joseph Vijay for PM campaign: A bid for power, or leverage?
N Marie Wilson’s faith and the test of secularism in Tamil Nadu
When Tamil Nadu CM Vijay’s charged rhetoric left questions unanswered
(P John J Kennedy is an educator, columnist, and political analyst. Edited by R Rajesh Kumar.)
