Tamil Nadu government formation: After Semmalai, AIADMK MP Thambi Durai too says Palaniswami will come back to power

The AIADMK Member of Parliament and former Deputy Speaker of Lok Sabha M. Thambi Durai, on Friday (May 8, 2026), expressed the hope that the party general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami would come back to power. 

Talking to journalists outside the residence of Mr. Palaniswami, the AIADMK veteran said during the election tour of the general secretary, the public sentiment was evident in favour of his party’s return to power. “I hope this may happen,” Mr. Thambi Durai observed, hastening to add it was for Mr. Palaniswami to take a call on the question of an alliance between the DMK and the AIADMK. 

He was responding to a question on the possibility of the truce between the two Dravidian majors. 

The former Deputy Speaker was the second senior leader who chose not to dismiss the talk of a patch up between the two parties. On Thursday (May 7), former Health Minister S. Semmalai, after calling on Mr. Palaniswami, said that his party leader would be the “king and not the kingmaker.” He would take a “firm and good decision” on the issue of alliance between his party and the DMK.

To another question whether the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK)’s leader K.A. Sengottaiyan was making an attempt to woo a section of the AIADMK’s newly-elected legislators, the former Minister dismissed it as a matter of speculation and answered that his party’s legislators were “not naive” to be carried away by any such move. “They are all bound by the general secretary’s word.”