AIADMK is leading a welfare war ahead of the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections with an array of high-octane electoral promises to capture a very specific group of voters. The AIADMK General Secretary and Leader of the Opposition, Edappadi K. Palaniswami (EPS), unveiled a new phase of the party's election guarantees in which each household will receive a one-time grand “compassionate relief” amount of ₹10,000.
Defending it as a strong response to price hikes under the prevailing DMK regime, EPS stressed that this pot is meant to cushion the financial pressure generated by the spikes in property taxes, house taxes, and electricity bills. Apart from household relief, AIADMK is leaning hard into "competitive populism" to offset the ruling party's schemes that are out in the open.
They are focusing on their strategy around the Kula Vilakku Thittam which promises the woman-head of every family holding a ration card ₹2,000 monthly financial assistance. That is equivalent to doubling the DMK government's ₹1,000 at present under Magalir Urimai Thittam.
The party also said it would restore and strengthen the Amma Two-Wheeler Scheme, with a subsidy of ₹25,000 to five lakh women and promised three free cooking gas cylinders every year to all rice-drawing ration cardholders. The AIADMK’s 2026 roadmap has also put the coastal and rural communities front-of-mind. For the state’s essential fishing sector, EPS has pledged to escalate the annual fishing ban-period relief from ₹8,000 to ₹12,000, as families lose the total income needed in the conservation months.
For weavers, the party introduced a dramatic increase in free electricity units raising the limit from 300 to 450 units for handloom weavers and from 1,000 to 1,400 units for powerloom operators. In its policy initiative, the party seeks to extend the guaranteed days of work in the MGNREGA scheme from 125 to 150 days in rural areas.
The agenda of the AIADMK’s ambitious manifesto centers on youth and students, as well. Now, for unemployed graduates, he said, the government will give them a monthly stipend of ₹2,000. Among those who have completed higher secondary education, that sum could be ₹1,000. Plus, in an effort to relieve the young generation of debt, the AIADMK has pledged to waive all educational loans from banks. Combined with the "Amma Ellam" housing scheme for rural homeless families and debt waivers for roadside vendors and people with disabilities, this is an aggressive push ahead of the April-May 2026 polls to form a broad support ecosystem.
