Capping his seven-year journey with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), resignation of the party’s former Tamil Nadu chief K. Annamalai was formally accepted by party chief Nitin Nabin on Friday (June 5, 2026). As efforts to retain him in the saffron folds failed, the IPS-turned-politician is set to launch his own regional party. His exit has been long in the making since he egged BJP to split with AIADMK and contest Lok Sabha polls solo in 2024. 

“No one can put a gun to one’s head and force a person to remain in a party. I will stay if I like or I will quit if I do not and continue doing farming,” Mr. Annamalai had proclaimed in November last year as BJP rekindled alliance talks with the AIADMK, seven months after Mr. Annamalai was replaced by Nainar Nagendran as BJP Tamil Nadu president. 

The last high-profile exit from the BJP was in November last year when former Union Minister R.K. Singh was suspended after he criticised the BJP’s choice of candidates for Bihar State elections, pointing out their criminal background and corruption. After being handed a six-year suspension, Mr. Singh quit the party has since then promised to launch a Bihar-focused party which will comprise ‘honest, educated and caste-free’ individuals.

Through the years, several high-profile leaders have quit the BJP to launch their own parties. A deeper look at their journey shows that most have either disbanded and rejoined the party or merged their outfits with BJP. A few have jumped ship to other parties.

From Jana Sangh to BJP

The genesis of BJP itself is from the split of Janata Party in 1980. The party’s constituents – Jana Sangh, Congress (O), Socialist Party and Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD), went their separate ways after the poll drubbing in 1980. Refusing to make changes in the Jana Sangh’s ideological parent – The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Jana Sangh was refashioned as the Bharatiya Janata Party on April 6, 1980 with Atal Bihari Vajpayee being its first president.

Shankersinh Vaghela (1996)

After BJP sucessfully wrested away Gujarat from Congress in 1995, senior BJP leader Shankersinh Vaghela rebelled against BJP’s CM pick Keshubhai Patel. With many MLAs backing Mr. Vaghela as CM, Mr. Patel was replaced by Mr. Suresh Mehta as CM in October 1995. However, the rift in the BJP continued and Mr. Vaghela rebelled once again in September 1996, flying 105 of the 121 BJP MLAs to a resort in Congress-ruled Madhya Pradesh’s Khajuraho. The Suresh Mehta government was soon dismissed and President’s Rule was imposed in Gujarat. 

Wresting away 47 MLAs from BJP, Mr. Vaghela formed his own party Rashtriya Janata Party which had the support of the Congress. He was sworn in as Gujarat’s twelfth CM but lasted only a year. Choosing not to contest the 1998 Gujarat state polls, he promptly merged his outfit with the Congress after the BJP regained power. After almost a decade in the Congress, Mr. Vaghela rebelled and cross-voted against Congress veteran Ahmed Patel in the Rajya Sabha polls in 2017. He later quit the party and founded a new party named Jan Vikalp Morcha, but was not recognised as an official political party by Election Commission.

After a brief stint in the Nationalist Congress Party, he launched another outfit named Praja Shakti Democratic Party to contest the 2022 Gujarat elections. However, he later bowed out and chose to back Congress instead.

Kalyan Singh (1999)

Overseeing the demolition of the Babri Masjid during his tenure as CM, Kalyan Singh was seen as BJP’s leader who would fructify its dream to build a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. However, after a hung verdict in the 1997 Uttar Pradesh elections, Mr. Singh was forced to share power with BSP chief Mayawati, irking factions with the BJP. When the BJP-BSP coalition hit choppy waters between 1998 and 1999, Mr. Singh faced internal revolt from upper-caste BJP MLAs forcing the BJP Central leadership to replace Mr. Singh with Ram Prakash Gupta as CM. 

Miffed at his ouster, Mr. Singh began vocally critiquing then-PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He alleged that the BJP had given up the issues it stood for and had been “Congres-sised“ under Mr. Vajpayee, leading to his expulsion in December 1999. Within days, he floated his own outfit ‘Rashtriya Kranti party’ based on the ideology of Hindutva. His party won four seats in the 2002 polls and sat in Opposition with Samajwadi Party (SP). After the BJP-BSP government fell in 2003, Mr. Singh allied with SP with his son Rajveer Singh joining his long-time nemesis Mulayam Singh Yadav’s cabinet. He jumped ship back to the BJP in 2004 and merged his outfit with the BJP. 

In January 2009, Mr. Singh once again quit BJP citing ‘humiliation at the hands of party brass’ and the party countered that it was Mr. Singh’s ‘ideologically opposite’ alliance with SP which drove a wedge. In November 2009, Mr. Yadav blamed SP’s alliance with Mr. Singh for its loss in the Firozabad Lok Sabha by-election. A miffed Mr. Singh quit the alliance, launched another outfit ‘Jan Kranti Party’ and appointed his son as its president. However, the outfit was disbanded and merged with the BJP in 2013 as the party ramped up its campaign for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The ex-UP CM rejoined the saffron party in March 2014 at a grand Modi rally in Lucknow and was subsequently appointed as Governor of Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh.

Uma Bharti (2005)

Known as the ‘fiery sanyasin of Khajuraho’, BJP’s Madhya Pradesh stalwart Uma Bharti first expressed wish to quit the party in 1992 amid infighting in the party’s state unit. While then-BJP chief L.K. Advani managed to mollify the ‘heroine of Ram Janmabhoomi movement’ to remain in the saffron folds, Ms. Bharti resigned from her Lok Sabha and the party post in 2000 after being stiffed for a Union cabinet berth. Four years later, she once again ‘quit politics’ after she was forced to step down as Madhya Pradesh CM due to a non-bailable warrant issued against her in connection with the 1994 Hubli riots.

As she became a vocal critic of her successor in MP – CM Babulal Gaur, she was sacked in November 2004 by Mr. Advani but was re-inducted as BJP’s general secretary a month later at the instance of RSS top brass. Inspite of her inclusion in BJP, Ms. Bharti was not reinstated as CM and continued to rail against Mr. Gaur’s successor – Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Her antics led to her expulsion from BJP and founding of the Bharatiya Janshakti Party (BJSP). 

Claiming to have the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s support, Ms. Bharti’s outfit failed to reap any political dividends as Mr. Chouhan retained the state winning 143 out of the 230 seats in the 2008 state polls. On the other hand, BJSP won only five seats and Ms. Bharti began warming towards rejoining BJP. After she was formally inducted back in BJP on June 7, 2011, the BJSP merged with the BJP later that month. Since then, she has expressed regret for quitting the BJP and has held several portfolios in the Modi cabinet. She is currently one of the party’s vice presidents.

Keshubhai Patel (2012)

Miffed at his protegee Narendra Modi’s rising stature in Gujarat, former CM Keshubhai Patel quit the BJP to form the Gujarat Parivartan party. Opposing Mr. Modi’s bid to seek a fourth term as CM in 2012, Mr. Patel had alleged that BJP had moved away from its principles towards personal glorification. After his party failed to open its account in the 2013 State polls, he rejoined the BJP in 2014 as Mr. Modi moved to Central leadership. Till his death in 2020, Mr. Patel remained in the BJP but quit active politics.

B.S. Yediyurappa (2012)

Indicted of illegal transaction with mining companies by Lokayukta, BJP’s tallest Lingayat leader in Karnataka – B.S. Yediyurappa was forced to step down as Chief Minister on July 27, 2011 after pressure from BJP’s central leadership. After his resignation, Mr. Yediyurappa quit the BJP to form his own party Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP). In the 2013 state polls, the KJP ate into the BJP’s Lingayat votebank, winning six seats and restricting the saffron party to 40.

A thaw between Mr. Yediyurappa and BJP’s central leadership appeared in September 2013 as Mr. Modi emerged as the BJP’s Prime Ministerial pick. As BJP ramped up its Lok Sabha campaign, Mr. Yediyurappa disbanded KJP in January 2014 and return to the saffron party’s fold. Since then, he has been elected as CM twice and has been elevated to the BJP’s Central Parliamentary board.

Yashwant Sinha (2018)

A Vajpayee veteran and former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha first resigned from party posts in June 2009 after the BJP failed to stop the UPA government from getting re-elected. Taking responsibility for poll-drubbing, he resigned as BJP’s vice-president and member of the national executive committee and urged all party workers to resign from their posts so that there could be ‘transparent, internal elections to these posts’. However, he remained a BJP worker.

Almost a decade later, Mr. Sinha quit from the BJP in 2018 after being sidelined by the BJP under Modi-Shah. Accusing the Modi government of undermining democratic institutions, Mr. Sinha vowed to launch a nationwide campaign to “save democracy”. 

Ahead of the Bihar elections, Mr. Sinha along with Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) leader Arun Kumar founded the Bhartiya Sab Log Party (BSLP). The outfit contested on 30 seats and failed to open its account. BSLP later merged with the Chirag Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) [LJP(RV)] in 2022.

Opposing the BJP, Mr. Sinha joined Trinamool Congress (TMC) in 2021 as the saffron party canvassed for the West Bengal elections. He was jointly chosen as the Opposition’s candidate for the 2022 Presidential elections, but lost to Droupadi Murmu by a margin of 2,96,626 votes. After his electoral loss, he quit TMC to launch the ‘Atal Vichar Manch’ ahead of the 2024 Jharkhand elections. The party is yet to contest any elections.

Increasing the strength of Parliament’s lower house to 850 is a “joke”, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has said, contending that it would turn it into a ‘desi’ version of the Chinese People’s Consultative Conference, which was countered by BJP leaders.

Participating in the Stanford India Conference 2026 in California on Sunday (May 10, 2026), BJP leader Tejasvi Surya argued that delimitation was a “democratic necessity” to ensure more accountability from elected representatives and termed it “absurd” to allow composition of Parliament to remain frozen in time at 543 – the current strength of the Lok Sabha.

“The 1971 population cannot cater to a democracy of 140 crore people in 2026,” Mr. Surya, the Lok Sabha MP, countered Mr. Tharoor, who cited the example of the U.S. Congress which continues to have a strength of 435 members since 1929.

BJP leader K. Annamalai said the delimitation exercise was a “grand bargain” between the North and South Indian States before the outcome of the ongoing Census is made public.

Mr. Annamalai, the former Tamil Nadu BJP chief, said the total fertility rate of Tamil Nadu was among the lowest in India, and once the census numbers are released, the north Indian states would naturally deserve a larger number of MPs.

“Now this is a grand bargain between the north Indian states and south Indian states to come to a definite conclusion to arrive at a number in which nobody is losing,” he said.

The three leaders were participating in the session titled ‘India, That Is Bharat: Growth, Governance, and Identity’ at the two-day conference organised by the Stanford India Policy and Economic Club.

Mr. Tharoor, the Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram, said a 850-member Lok Sabha chamber will become a “desi version of the Chinese People’s Consultative Conference where you just stand up when the great leader comes and thump your desks”.

“You won’t have a chance to speak, argue, debate anything. 850 is a joke,” Mr. Tharoor said.

He said that the U.S. population has tripled since 1929, and still the strength of the U.S. House of Representatives has remained at 435 “because they recognise that you cannot have a debating chamber of 850”.

Mr. Tharoor, a member of the Congress Working Committee, said that the issue of women’s reservation cannot be linked to delimitation, and his party was ready to support reserving one-third of the seats in the Lok Sabha for women as a standalone measure.

“Vote for it today. You can vote for it immediately. Don’t link it to delimitation. Have one-third reservation for women in today’s parliament and we will all vote for it,” the former Union Minister said.

Mr. Tharoor spoke in favour of waiting for the Census figures to be released between 2027 and 2029, and let that data lead to the delimitation.

“Probably around the time of the 2034 election, you’ll have a new map of India, politically. Between roughly 2027 and 2034, you need to have a profound debate about the future shape of this country for the next 50 years,” Mr. Tharoor said.

Stressing on the urgency of the delimitation exercise, Mr. Annamalai said he gets to see his Lok Sabha member only in newspapers as he represents anywhere between 22-30 lakh voters.

“It is impossible for a common citizen to actually go and meet the MP and get things done. So, not just because it is a constitutional mandate, delimitation should be done once in 10 years. It is also a democratic necessity because in the existing framework, there is no question of accountability as far as the elected representative is concerned,” Mr. Surya said.

“We want to make democracy accountable. We want to ensure that there is accountability between the voter and the elected and while doing all of this, we want to ensure that neither the North nor the South feels somebody has lost and somebody is unfairly given,” said Mr. Surya, the president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP.

Published – May 11, 2026 06:55 am IST

New Delhi:

Cricketer R Ashwin’s recent remark that Hindi is not India’s national language but only an official language has been supported by BJP Tamil Nadu President Annamalai, who has said that it is a “language of convenience”. 

Attending a convocation ceremony at a private college near Chennai on Thursday, the Tamil Nadu-born cricketer had asked what language the students would like him to address them in. “English students in the house – give me a yay,” he said, getting a loud cheer in reply. He then said “Tamil” and got an even louder roar from the audience. When he said “Hindi”, however, there was total silence.

 “I thought I should say this. Hindi is not our national language; it is an official language,” he then said in Tamil.

Asked about the comments on Friday, Annamalai said Hindi was a “link language”. 

“Correct. It is not a national language, which Annamalai is also telling you. Not only my dear friend Ashwin has to say that… not only anybody… It is not the national language. It was a link language, it is a language of convenience… And nowhere am I saying or anybody is saying Hindi is the national language, which Ashwin ji is correct (sic),” he said.  

“Hindi imposition” has been a sensitive subject in Tamil Nadu and there have been several protests and campaigns in the state over the years. 

In October last year, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK chief Stalin MK had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the Golden Jubilee Celebrations of Chennai Doordarshan being combined with Hindi Month Celebrations and said celebrating “such-Hindi language oriented events in non-Hindi speaking states” can be avoided.

“As you are aware, the Constitution of India does not accord national language status to any language. Hindi and English are used only for official purposes such as legislation, judiciary and communication between the Union government and state governments. In the circumstances, in a multilingual country like India, according special place to Hindi and celebrating Hindi Month in non-Hindi speaking States is seen as an attempt to belittle other languages,” Mr Stalin wrote.

A viral video featuring Tamil Nadu BJP president K Annamalai has sparked controversy with the claim that it shows Annamalai disparaging Hindu nationalist ideologue VD Savarkar.

In the video, Annamalai could be heard saying, “Savarkar, it is generally said about him that he licked the boots of the Englishman. (translated from Tamil)”

The Tamil text on the 11-second video clip read ‘The lamb revealing the truth. (translated from Tamil)’ The video clip also included a scene from the Malayalam movie ‘Kaalapaani’, where actor Mohanlal is seen licking a British officer’s boot, describing what Annamalai was saying in the video allegedly about Savarkar.

An X user shared the video claiming that Annamalai made the remarks about Savarkar before joining the BJP. The caption read, “I was looking for this video for two days. Aadu Annamalai before joining BJP! (Translated from Tamil)”

Another X user has shared the video with the caption “The lamb unveiled the truth about Savarkar…”

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the claim is misleading as the video clip has been edited to remove the context.

By using relevant keywords, we found the extended version of the clip on the YouTube channel Inside Tamil titled ‘Thiru. Annamalai l Press Meet l BJP l Savarkar Book Published.’ It was published on October 2, 2021.

The video shows the launch of a book on Savarkar for which Annamalai was the chief guest. Prabha Khaitan Foundation, the book’s publisher, shared the details of the book launch on X.

At the 6:28-minute mark in the YouTube video, while responding to a media question about Savarkar, Annamalai said, “In Tamil Nadu, when people discuss Veer Savarkar, they often criticise him right away. They call him an apologist. I don’t want to use that word. In Tamil Nadu, they usually say British boot licker. People say that Veer Savarkar licked the boots of the Englishman. But does that comment really do justice to the man?”

The viral clip only featured Annamalai’s ‘boot lick’ statement while editing out the context making it look like he was criticising Savarkar. However, throughout the press conference, Annamalai could be seen stating that Savarkar was innocent and that his actions were not wrong.

Those sharing the clip claim that Annamalai made the ‘negative comments’ about Savarkar before joining the BJP. However, Annamalai joined the BJP on August 25, 2020, and the video is from 2021, a year after he joined the party.

Hence, the video of Annamalai ‘criticising’ Savarkar is edited and is being shared without context. The claim is misleading.

Claim Review: The video shows TN BJP state president K Annamalai making disparaging remarks about Savarkar, calling him a ‘boot licker of the British.’

Claimed By: X

Claim Reviewed By: NewsMeter

Claim Source: X users

Claim Fact Check: False

Fact: The claim is misleading. In the original extended video, Annamalai was refuting allegations made against Savarkar.

(This story was originally published by NewsMeter, and republished by NDTV as part of the Shakti Collective)