The 16th legislative assembly election of Tamil Nadu is scheduled to be held on 6 April 2021.
These will be the first assembly polls in the southern state to be held after the demise of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader J Jayalalithaa, who passed away in December 2016, just months after winning the re-election earlier that year. In the 2016 assembly elections, Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK became the first party to be re-elected since 1984, winning 136 of the southern state’s 234 assembly constituencies. Though the party crossed the majority mark of 117, its tally was 14 short of what it won in 2011. The late M Karunanidhi-led Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, meanwhile, nearly tripled its tally, going from 31 to 98.
The 2016 assembly elections also turned out to be the last contested by both Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi. While Jayalalithaa passed away in December that year, Karunanidhi breathed his last in August 2018.