The eleventh legislative assembly election of

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a States and union territories of India, state in southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of India ...

was held on 2 May 1996. The

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (; DMK) is a political party based in the state of Tamil Nadu where it is currently the ruling party having a comfortable majority without coalition support and the union territory of Puducherry where it is curre ...

(DMK) led front won the election and its leader M. Karunanidhi, became the chief minister. This was his fourth term in office. S. Balakrishnan, also known as So. Balakrishnan, of

Tamil Maanila Congress The Tamil Maanila Congress (Moopanar) (; TMC(M)) is an Indian regional political party in the state of Tamil Nadu. It is founded by the former Member of Parliament of the Republic of India G. K. Moopanar on 29 March 1996 as a breakaway fact ...

( TMC ), became the Leader of the Opposition. The incumbent

All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (; AIADMK) is an Indian regional political party with great influence in the state of Tamil Nadu and the union territory of Puducherry. It is a Dravidian party founded by the former chief mini ...

(AIADMK) government was defeated in a landslide with its general secretary and outgoing chief minister J. Jayalalithaa losing the election from the Bargur constituency. She became the first Incumbent Chief Minister since M. Bakthavatsalam in 1967 to lose her own constituency.

Background

Anti-Jayalalithaa

The J. Jayalalithaa led

(AIADMK) government, which had been in power since 1991 was beset with corruption scandals and public discontent. A series of corruption scandals, a growing reputation for high handedness and an extravagant public wedding for Jayalalithaa's foster son Sudhakaran all combined to erode the AIADMK support base and the goodwill she had enjoyed with the electorate in the 1991 elections.

Formation of TMC

The AIADMK's alliance with

Indian National Congress The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party but often simply the Congress, is a political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Em ...

(INC), which had helped it to win the 1991 elections ran into trouble midway through the AIADMK's term. J. Jayalalithaa terminated the alliance and Congress served as the principal opposition party in the

Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly The Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly is the unicameral legislature of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It has a strength of 234 members of whom are democratically elected using the First-past-the-post voting, First-past-the-post system. The pres ...

. When the 1996 elections drew closer, it was expected that the Congress would contest the elections in alliance with the DMK. However against the wishes of the Tamil Nadu state unit of the Congress, the national congress leader (and then Indian prime minister)

P. V. Narasimha Rao Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao (28 June 1921 – 23 December 2004) was an Indian lawyer, statesman and politician who served as the 9th prime minister of India from 1991 to 1996. He is known for introducing various liberal reforms to Indi ...

announced that the Congress would ally with the AIADMK. This led to a split in the Tamil Nadu Congress with a majority of the party workers and cadre forming the

(TMC) led by G. K. Moopanar. The TMC contested the elections in alliance with the DMK.

Formation of MDMK

In 1993, the DMK suffered a split when one of its more prominent second rung leaders,

Vaiko Vaiyapuri Gopalsamy, better known as Vaiko, is an Indian politician. He is a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Parliament of India from Tamil Nadu. He is the founder and General Secretary of the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra ...

was expelled from the party membership. The next year Vaiko floated a new party – the

Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam The Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam ( 'Renaissance Dravidian Progressive Federation') is a political party active in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry. It was established by Vaiko in 1994 after ...

(MDMK).

Coalitions

There were four main coalitions in the 1996 elections. The DMK-TMC front which also included the

Communist Party of India Communist Party of India (CPI) is the oldest Marxist–Leninist communist party in India and one of the nine national parties in the country. The CPI was founded in modern-day Kanpur (formerly known as Cawnpore) on 26 December 1925. H ...

(CPI) and the AIADMK-Congress front were the main political groupings in the state. Both fronts had a number of smaller parties as constituents. The

Indian National League Indian National League (abbreviated as the I. N. L.) is an Indian political party formed in 1994 under the leadership of the then Indian Union Muslim League leader Ebrahim Sulaiman Sait. The party is currently a member of the Communist Party o ...

and the All India Forward Bloc were part of the DMK front, while the AIADMK front also had Muslim Leagues, Forward Block, All India Republic Party, Uzhavar Uzhaippalar Katchi and United Communist Party. Apart from these two fronts, there was a MDMK led coalition which included the

Communist Party of India (Marxist) The Communist Party of India (Marxist) (abbreviated as CPI(M)/CPIM/CPM) is a Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninist communist List of political parties in India, political party in India. It is the largest communist party of India in term ...

(CPM), the

Janata Dal Janata Dal (“People’s Party”) was an List of political parties in India, Indian political party which was formed through the merger of Janata Party factions, the Lok Dal, Indian National Congress (Jagjivan), and the Jan Morcha united on 11 ...

(JD) and the

Samajwadi Janata Party Samajwadi Janata Party (Rashtriya) (SJP(R)), also called as Janata Dal (Socialist) is an Indian political party founded by Chandra Shekhar, 8th Prime Minister of India in 1990–91, and led by him until his death on 8 July 2007. Chandra Shekhar ...

(SJP). The alliance between

Pattali Makkal Katchi Paattali Makkal Katchi (; PMK) is a political party in Tamil Nadu, India, founded by S. Ramadoss in 1989 for the Vanniyars, a caste in northern Tamil Nadu. It is currently part of the BJP led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). It contests th ...

(PMK) and

All India Indira Congress (Tiwari) The All India Indira Congress (Tiwari) was a political party in India set up by dissident Indian National Congress party leaders Narayan Datt Tiwari, Arjun Singh, Natwar Singh and Rangarajan Kumaramangalam. The party later merged with the Cong ...

(Tiwari Congress) led by ''Vazhappady'' Ramamurthy was the fourth coalition that contested the elections. Initially, before the TMC was formed, the DMK put together a seven party alliance comprising itself, PMK, CPI, Tiwari Congress and a few other parties. However, this alliance fell through when the Tiwari Congress and PMK left the front after differences between Karunanidhi and Ramamurthy. After this, Cho Ramaswamy (editor of ''

Thuglak ) , logo =Thuglak.jpg , image = , image_size = 150px , image_caption = ''Thuglak'' ( ta, துக்ளக்) , editor = Swaminathan Gurumurthy , editor_title = Editor , previous_editor = Cho Ramaswamy , staff_writer = , frequency = ...

'') played a vital role in bringing together the DMK-TMC coalition and obtaining actor Rajinikanth's support for it. There were a few other smaller political formations and parties contesting the election – the

Bharatiya Janata Party The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; ; ) is a political party in India, and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under Narendra Modi ...

(BJP) contested the elections alone;

Subramanian Swamy Subramanian Swamy (born 15 September 1939) is an Indian politician, economist and statistician. Before joining politics, he was a professor of Mathematical Economics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He is known for his Hindu na ...

Janata Party The Janata Party ( JP, lit. ''People's Party'') was a political party that was founded as an amalgam of Indian political parties opposed to the Emergency that was imposed between 1975 and 1977 by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of the Indian Nati ...

contested in alliance with the caste organisation Devendra Kula Vellar Sangam led by

Dalit Dalit (from sa, दलित, dalita meaning "broken/scattered"), also previously known as untouchable, is the lowest stratum of the Caste system in India, castes in India. Dalits were excluded from the four-fold Varna (Hinduism), varna syste ...

leader K. Krishnasamy.

Rajinikanth's support

The DMK-TMC alliance enlisted the popular

Tamil film Tamil cinema, also known as Kollywood is a part of Indian Cinema; primarily engaged in production of motion pictures in the Tamil language. Based out of the Kodambakkam neighbourhood in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, it is popularly called ''Kollywood' ...

actor

Rajinikanth Shivaji Rao Gaikwad (born 12 December 1950), known professionally as Rajinikanth, is an Indian actor, producer and screenwriter. In a career spanning over five decades, he has done 160 films that includes films in Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Kannad ...

to campaign against the AIADMK in the elections. Rajinikanth declared his support for the DMK-TMC combine and members of his numerous fan clubs campaigned for the DMK front across Tamil Nadu. In a widely watched campaign appearance broadcast in Sun TV, he declared "even God cannot save Tamil Nadu if AIADMK returns to power".Rajinikanth's support gave enormous victory to DMK

Seat allotments

AIADMK-INC Front

DMK-TMC Front

MDMK-CPI(M) Front

PMK-Tiwari Congress Front

Voting and results

Polling took place on 2 May 1996 and results were announced on 12 May. The turnout among registered voters was 66.95%. The assembly elections were held simultaneously along with the Indian parliamentary elections.

Constituency results

List of winners and runners-up by constituency

Impact

AIADMK suffered a rout in the elections. Most of sitting ministers of the AIADMK government, including the chief minister Jayalalithaa lost their seats. Jayalalithaa lost to DMK's E. G. Sugavanam by a margin of 8,366 votes in the Bargur constituency. A year after the election, the AIADMK split, when a faction led by the Arantaki MLA

Su. Thirunavukkarasar Subburaman Thirunavukkarasar (born 13 July 1949) is an Indian politician. He was the State President of Tamil Nadu Congress Committee till 2 February 2019 and former secretary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) of the Indian National ...

broke away from the party. The MDMK which was contesting its first statewide elections since its formation in 1994 drew a blank. MDMK leader Vaiko was defeated in both the

Vilathikulam Assembly constituency Vilathikulam State Assembly constituency ( ta, விளாத்திகுளம் சட்டமன்றத் தொகுதி) is one of the 234 Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly, state legislative assembly constituencies in Tamil Nadu ...

and the Sivakasi parliamentary constituency. This election also saw the PMK electing four members to the assembly. The massive victory of the DMK-TMC-CPI combine in the assembly elections spilled over to the

parliamentary elections A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...

. The coalition was able to win all 39 parliamentary seats in Tamil Nadu and the lone parliamentary seat in the nearby

Pondicherry Pondicherry (), now known as Puducherry ( French: Pondichéry ʊdʊˈtʃɛɹi(listen), on-dicherry, is the capital and the most populous city of the Union Territory of Puducherry in India. The city is in the Puducherry district on the sout ...

. This tally of 40 seats enabled the DMK-TMC combine to be part of the United Front government during 1996–98.

Cabinet

, After the death of the minister Thiru V.Thangapandian there is a Inclusion of Thiru Pasumpon Tha Kirittinan as Minister for Highways and seniority changes done he is placed in No 9 in ministers list and the cabinet re-designated several changes shuffling done.

References

External links

Election Commission of India
{{Tamil Nadu assembly elections, state=expanded State Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu 1990s in Tamil Nadu

May 1996 events in Asia 1996 in Indian politics