The eleventh legislative assembly election of

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is the southernmost States and union territories of India, state of India. 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 Indi ...

was held on 2 May 1996. The

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (; ; DMK) is an Indian political party based in the state of Tamil Nadu, where it is currently the ruling party, and the union territory of Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry, where it is currently the main ...

(DMK) led front won the election securing 221 seats in the 234 seat

Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly The Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly is the unicameral legislature of the India, Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It has a strength of 234 members, all of whom are democratically elected using the first-past-the-post system. The presiding office ...

, and its leader M. Karunanidhi, became the

chief minister A chief minister is an elected or appointed head of government of – in most instances – a sub-national entity, for instance an administrative subdivision or federal constituent entity. Examples include a state (and sometimes a union ter ...

. In the tenth Tamil Nadu assembly,

All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (; AIADMK, also abbreviated as ADMK), also shortened to Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, is an Indian Regionalism (politics), regional political party with great influence in the Federated state, sta ...

(AIADMK) held the majority with its leader

J. Jayalalithaa Jayaram Jayalalithaa (24 February 1948 – 5 December 2016), popularly known as Amma, was an Indian actress, politician, and philanthropist who served as the chief minister of Tamil Nadu for more than fourteen years between 1991 and 2016. She ...

as the chief minister. The elections resulted in a landslide defeat for the incumbent government, with the AIADMK winning only four seats. Outgoing chief minister Jayalalithaa lost the election from the

Bargur Bargur is a selection-grade town panchayat in the Krishnagiri district of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, that serves as the headquarters of Bargur taluk, one of the seven taluks in Krishnagiri district. History The town panchayat of Bargur was ...

, and became the first incumbent chief minister since

M. Bakthavatsalam Minjur Bhakthavatsalam (9 October 1897 – 13 February 1987) was an Indian independence activist and politician who served as the chief minister of Madras State from 2 October 1963 to 6 March 1967. He was the last Congress chief minister of Tam ...

1967 Events January * January 1 – Canada begins a year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of Canadian Confederation, Confederation, featuring the Expo 67 World's Fair. * January 6 – Vietnam War: United States Marine Corps and Army of ...

to lose the elections.

Background

Anti-Jayalalithaa

The

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, or simply the Congress, is a political parties in India, political party in India with deep roots in most regions of India. Founded on 28 December 1885, it was the first mo ...

(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

. 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 independence activist, lawyer, and statesman from the Indian National Congress who served as the prime minister of India from 1991 to 1996. He was the first p ...

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

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

(TMC) led by

G. K. Moopanar Govindaswamy Karuppiah Moopanar (19 August 1931 – 30 August 2001), known as G. K. Moopanar, was a Tamil Nadu Congress Committee leader, parliamentarian, and social worker. He served as Member of the Rajya Sabha, president of Tamil Nadu Congr ...

. 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 Vaiko, birth name Vaiyapuri Gopalsamy (born 22 May 1944), 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 Drav ...

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

Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam The Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (; MDMK) is a political party active in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It was established by Vaiko in 1994 after he left the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. The headquarters of the party is called Thayag ...

(MDMK).

Coalitions

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

Communist Party of India The Communist Party of India (CPI) is a political party in India. The CPI considers the Foundation of the Communist Party of India, December 26, 1925 Cawnpore (Kanpur) conference as its foundation date. Between 1946 and 1951, the CPI led m ...

(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 (INL) is an Indian political party formed in 1994 under the leadership of the then IUML leader Ebrahim Sulaiman Sait. The party is currently a member of the CPIM-led LDF in Kerala. INL leader Ahamed Devarkovil, MLA ...

and the

All India Forward Bloc The All India Forward Bloc ( AIFB) is a Left-wing nationalism, left-wing nationalist political party in India. It emerged as a Political faction, faction within the Indian National Congress in 1939, led by Subhas Chandra Bose, and was strongest ...

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)) is a Communism in India, communist List of political parties in India, political party in India. It is the largest communist party in India in terms of membership and electora ...

(CPM), the

Janata Dal Janata Dal () was an List of political parties in India, Indian political party which was formed through the merger of Lok Dal, Indian National Congress (Jagjivan), and the Jan Morcha on 11 October 1988—the birth anniversary of Jayaprakash Na ...

(JD) and the

Samajwadi Janata Party Samajwadi Janata Party (Rashtriya) (SJP(R)) was an Indian political party founded by Chandra Shekhar, who served as prime minister of the country from 1990 to 1991. He led the party until his death on 8 July 2007. At the time of his death, he was ...

(SJP). The alliance between

Pattali Makkal Katchi The Pattali Makkal Katchi (; PMK) is a caste-based political party in Tamil Nadu, India. It was founded by S. Ramadoss in 1989 to provide political representation for the Vanniyar caste, a community found throughout Northern Tamil Nadu. It is a ...

(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 The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party, or simply the Congress, is a political parties in Ind ...

(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 Srinivasa Iyer Ramaswamy, better known as Cho Ramaswamy (5 October 1934 – 7 December 2016), was an Indian actor, comedian, editor, political commentator, satirist, playwright, film director and lawyer from Tamil Nadu. He was a popular comedi ...

(editor of ''

Thuglak ''Thuglak'' () is a Tamil language weekly news magazine. It has now expanded Digitally with an active Youtube Channel calle''Thuglak Digital''and a X(previously known as Twitter) account also under the same page nam''Thuglak Digital'' History ...

'') 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 List of political parties in India, Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. BJP emerged out from Syama Prasad Mukherjee's ...

(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 ...

Janata Party The Janata Party (JP, ) is an unrecognised political party in India. Navneet Chaturvedi is the current president of the party since November 2021, replacing Jaiprakash Bandhu. The JP was established as an amalgam of Indian political partie ...

contested in alliance with the caste organisation Devendra Kula Velalar Sangam led by Dr.

K. Krishnasamy K. Krishnasamy (born 3 April 1952) is an Indian physician, social worker and politician who was a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Tamil Nadu. He founded the Puthiya Tamilagam party in 1999 and was elected to the Tamil Nadu legislative a ...

Rajinikanth's support

The DMK-TMC alliance enlisted the popular

Tamil film Tamil cinema is the segment of Indian cinema dedicated to the production of motion pictures in the Tamil language, the main spoken language in the state of Tamil Nadu. It is nicknamed Kollywood, a portmanteau of the names Kodambakkam, a Chen ...

actor

Rajinikanth Shivaji Rao Gaikwad (born 12 December 1950), known professionally as Rajinikanth, is an Indian actor who predominantly works in Tamil cinema. In a career spanning over five decades, he has done 170 films that includes films in Tamil, Hindi, ...

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

DMK-TMC Front

AIADMK-INC Front

People's Democratic 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

1996 Indian general election General elections were held in India on 27 April, 2 May and 7 May 1996 to elect the members of the 11th Lok Sabha, eleventh Lok Sabha. The elections resulted in a hung parliament with no single party having a clear majority. The Bharatiya Jan ...

Results by Pre-Poll Alliance

1996 tamil nadu legislative election map by parties

!colspan=10, , - ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:left;vertical-align:top;" , Alliance/Party !style="width:4px" , ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" , Seats won ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" , Change ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" , Popular Vote ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" , Vote % ! style="background-color:#E9E9E9;text-align:right;" , Adj. %^‡ , - ! style="background-color:#FF0000; color:white", DMK+ Alliance ! style="background-color: " , , 221 , +214 , 14,600,748 , style="text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;" colspan=2 , 53.77% , - ,

DMK DMK may refer to: Organizations Political parties * Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, a political party in India * Democratic Movement of Kerala a political party in Kerala India Landmarks * DMK, IATA code for Don Mueang International Airport, in Bangko ...

! style="background-color: #FF0000" , , 173 , +171 , 11,423,380 , 42.07% , 54.04% , - , TMC(M) ! style="background-color: #008080" , , 39 , +39 , 2,526,474 , 9.3% , 55.21% , - , CPI ! style="background-color: #0000FF" , , 8 , +7 , 575,570 , 2.12% , 42.95% , - , AIFB ! style="background-color: #800000" , , 1 , +1 , 75,324 , 0.28% , 76.18% , - ! style="background-color:#009900; color:white", AIADMK+ alliance ! style="background-color: " , , 4 , -221 , 7,354,723 , style="text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;" colspan=2 , 27.08% , - ,

AIADMK The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (; AIADMK, also abbreviated as ADMK), also shortened to Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, is an Indian regional political party with great influence in the state of Tamil Nadu and the union territory ...

! style="background-color: #008000" , , 4 , -160 , 5,831,383 , 21.47% , 29.24% , - , INC ! style="background-color: #00FFFF" , , 0 , -60 , 1,523,340 , 5.61% , 21.09% , - ! style="background-color:#ff2a00 ; color:black", MDMK+ alliance ! style="background-color:#ff2a00 , , 2 , 0 , 2,143,141 , style="text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;" colspan=2 , 7.89% , - ,

MDMK The Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (; MDMK) is a political party active in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It was established by Vaiko in 1994 after he left the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. The headquarters of the party is called Thayaga ...

! style="background-color: #ff2a00" , , 0 , 0 , 1,569,168 , 5.78% , 7.6% , - ,

CPI(M) The Communist Party of India (Marxist) (abbreviated as CPI(M)) is a communist political party in India. It is the largest communist party in India in terms of membership and electoral seats, and one of the six national parties of India. ...

! style="background-color: #000080" , , 1 , 0 , 456,712 , 1.68% , 9.57% , - , JD ! style="background-color: " , , 1 , 0 , 117,801 , 0.43% , 7.31% , - ! style="background-color:yellow; color:black", PMK+ Alliance ! style="background-color:yellow" , , 4 , +3 , 1,252,275 , style="text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;" colspan=2 , 4.61% , - , PMK ! style="background-color: #800080" , , 4 , +3 , 1,042,333 , 3.84% , 7.61% , - , AIIC(T) ! style="background-color: " , , 0 , 0 , 209,942 , 0.77% , 4.23% , - ! style="background-color:gray; color:white", Others ! style="background-color:gray" , , 3 , +1 , 1,662,926 , style="text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;" colspan=2 , 6.12% , - ,

BJP 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. BJP emerged out from Syama Prasad Mukherjee's Bharatiya Jana Sangh. Since 2014, ...

! style="background-color: " , , 1 , +1 , 490,453 , 1.81% , 2.93% , - , JP ! style="background-color: " , , 1 , +1 , 150,134 , 0.55% , 2.51% , - ,

IND Ind or IND may refer to: General * Independent (politician), a politician not affiliated to any political party * Independent station, used within television program listings and the television industry for a station that is not affiliated with ...

! style="background-color: " , , 1 , 0 , 1,022,339 , 3.76% , 3.8% , - , style="text-align:center;" , Total ! style="background-color: " , , 234 , – , 27,154,721 , style="text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;" colspan=2 , 100% , -

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 C ...

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 is one of the 234 state legislative assembly constituencies in Tamil Nadu, in southern India. It is also one of the six state legislative assembly constituencies included in Thoothukkudi Lok Sabha constituency Thoothukkudi Lok ...

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 an electoral process to choose most or all members of a governing body at the same time. They are distinct from by-elections, which fill individual seats that have become vacant between general elections. General elections ...

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

Pondicherry Pondicherry, officially known as Puducherry, is the Capital city, capital and most populous city of the Puducherry (union territory), Union Territory of Puducherry in India. The city is in the Puducherry district on the southeast coast of Indi ...

. 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 in India 1996 in Indian politics