The coming Assembly byelections in Madurantakam and Dharapuram, both reserved for Scheduled Castes, are shaping up as more than routine electoral contests in Tamil Nadu. For the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, they amount to a politically loaded test of whether the party can recover influence among a voter bloc that once formed a crucial part of its social coalition but has steadily drifted away in recent election cycles.
The numbers tell the story starkly. In the 2016 Assembly election, the AIADMK won 32 of the State's 44 Scheduled Caste-reserved seats, a commanding performance that underscored its strength among Dalit voters at the time. By 2021, that number had fallen to 15. In 2026, it dropped further to eight. The slide has become one of the clearest indicators of the party's broader weakening after the death of former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, and it now hangs over the Madurantakam and Dharapuram contests.
The erosion has not been merely statistical. It has also been organisational and symbolic. Of the AIADMK's newly elected SC legislators, two — K. Maragatham Kumaravel and P. Sathyabama — later quit the party after voting in favour of the ruling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam in the trust motion on the Assembly floor in mid-May. Their departure sharpened questions about the AIADMK's internal cohesion and its ability to retain leaders from communities that once saw the party as a viable vehicle for representation and advancement.
C.K. Thamizharasan, a four-time MLA who was elected three times on an AIADMK ticket, has offered one of the bluntest diagnoses from within the party's own tradition. He argues that the present leadership failed to sustain the pro-SC policy orientation associated with the party's earlier eras in power and did not craft effective electoral strategies to retain the community's support.
In recalling the AIADMK's older social justice credentials, Thamizharasan points to what he calls a "revolutionary step" under party founder and former Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran in the early 1980s: the abolition of the hereditary system of Village Officers and the opening created for Scheduled Castes through appointments under the Village Administrative Officers scheme. In his telling, that move had both practical and psychological significance, expanding access to state-linked employment and signaling a willingness to disrupt entrenched hierarchies.
He also invokes the Jayalalithaa years, especially 2011-16, when her government relaxed norms under the post-matriculation scholarship scheme for SC and ST students pursuing engineering and other professional courses. According to Thamizharasan, the situation changed after her death, when eligibility conditions were made "stringent," rendering the scheme "virtually out of bounds" for many SC students. For him, the political consequence is clear: a party that once translated welfare and administrative decisions into durable social support has not maintained the same connection with Dalit voters in the post-Jayalalithaa period.
At the same time, he argues that the SC vote bank itself has become fragmented over the years, making any straightforward recovery difficult. That fragmentation is central to the significance of the two byelections. Even if the AIADMK retains pockets of goodwill, it is now competing in a more crowded and fluid political field in which symbolic representation, welfare delivery, and local candidate credibility all matter intensely.
The ruling TVK, for its part, is seeking to project itself as more inclusive. Yet even here, the debate is contested. Thamizharasan contends that although the TVK government has eight SC Ministers, they were not included "willingly," suggesting that representation alone does not settle the question of political intent. The ruling party rejects that line of criticism.
M. Anandan, one of the newly appointed deputy general secretaries of the TVK and a former Adi-Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Minister in the first Jayalalithaa Cabinet from 1991 to 1996, argues that both the DMK and the AIADMK, despite having alternated in power for nearly six decades, performed poorly in providing "fair representation" to Scheduled Castes. By contrast, he says, the TVK's organisational structure gives as much importance to SCs as to any other social group. His intervention broadens the argument beyond electoral arithmetic, framing the issue as one of long-term institutional inclusion rather than episodic accommodation.
The AIADMK insists that such criticism ignores both its history and its recent record. M. Dhanapal, the party's Rajya Sabha member, says general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami has followed in the footsteps of MGR and Jayalalithaa, both of whom, he says, "went out of the way" to accommodate Scheduled Castes. Dhanapal points to welfare measures implemented when Palaniswami was Chief Minister, including the rural habitation scheme, which he says benefited the community. He also stresses that the party has continued to elevate SC leaders within its own ranks, citing figures such as former Minister Varagur A. Arunachalam.
Still, the electoral trend remains difficult for the AIADMK to explain away. Historically, the party's performance in SC-reserved seats often tracked its wider fortunes, but the current decline appears especially sharp. It won 20 SC seats in both 1977 and 1980, 23 in 1984, and 31 in the 1991 landslide. After the 1996 collapse, it recovered to 21 in 2001, then 28 in 2011 and 32 in 2016. The subsequent fall to 15 in 2021 and eight in 2026 suggests not just cyclical anti-incumbency but a deeper weakening of a once-reliable support base.
That is why Madurantakam and Dharapuram matter beyond their seat count. If the AIADMK performs strongly, it could argue that its decline among SC voters is reversible and that localised rebuilding under Palaniswami is possible. If it falters, the result will reinforce the view that the party's old social coalition has fractured in ways that cannot be repaired by legacy alone.
In Tamil Nadu politics, reserved-seat byelections often reveal shifts before they become visible statewide. In these two constituencies, voters will be weighing not only party labels but also competing claims about welfare, dignity, representation and political memory. For the AIADMK, the verdict may show whether its appeal among Scheduled Caste voters is merely diminished — or fundamentally transformed.