PMK to be out of Union Ministry after a decade

After enjoying power as a partner of both Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party alternately at the Centre for a decade, PMK suffered a severe blow this time as it failed to win a single seat out of the seven it contested in alliance with All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.

PMK founder S Ramadoss always claimed that his party would be with the winning alliance, but it proved wrong this time.

Poll analysts say the reason for its drubbing was party's frequent change of alliance partners. The PMK, which had aligned with the National Democratic Alliance, of which the AIADMK was a partner in 1998, continued with it for 1999 Lok Sabha polls when the AIADMK went to the Congress camp while the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam struck an alliance with the BJP.

But during the 2001 assembly polls, PMK snapped ties with the DMK to align with the AIADMK. But two months after the polls, PMK was back in the DMK-BJP fold as AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa refused to give a Rajya Sabha seat to the party.

Again in 2004 Lok Sabha polls, it dumped the NDA along with the DMK to join the UPA and continued to be in the alliance for the 2006 assembly polls.

But its allaince with the ruling DMK collapsed in the run up to the 2009 elections. It joined the AIADMK front and contested seven seats but lost all of them.