Tamil Nadu political crisis: Rebel AIADMK MLA Balakrishna Reddy supports EPS, submits apology letter amid turmoil in party

New Delhi: Amid growing factionalism within the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and a series of resignations of rebel MLAs, Hosur MLA P Balakrishna Reddy on Tuesday extended support to party general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami, an indication that a truce may emerge within some sections of the party.According to news agency ANI, Balakrishna Reddy met the Assembly Secretary and submitted an apology letter saying that he should not be disqualified.His move comes a day after five AIADMK MLAs submitted similar apology letters to the Speaker’s office expressing support for the Palaniswami faction.The development comes as the AIADMK is facing a growing internal crisis following defection and resignations from the rival camp led by senior leaders C V Shanmugam and SP Velumani.

Rebel MLAs may be disqualified

MLAs from the Shanmugam faction had voted in favor of the ruling Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam government during the trust vote on May 13, triggering anti-defection proceedings.Under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, MLAs can face disqualification if they vote against their party’s instructions without prior permission.The AIADMK had earlier sought disqualification of 25 rebel MLAs for allegedly disobeying Palaniswami’s instructions during the trust motion.The party’s troubles further increased after Ambasamudram MLA Esakki Subaya resigned from the assembly on Tuesday. Speaker JCD Prabhakar initially rejected Subaya’s typed resignation letter and asked him to submit a handwritten copy, which was later accepted.With Subaya’s exit, the number of resignations from the AIADMK camp has increased to four in two days, reducing the party’s strength to 43 MLAs in the 234-member Assembly.

The issue of ‘horse-trading’ has intensified

On Monday, MLAs Maragatham Kumaravel, P Sathyabama and S Jayakumar resigned from the assembly and later joined the ruling TVK in the presence of minister Aadhav Arjun.The total number of vacant assembly constituencies in Tamil Nadu has now increased to five, including Tiruchirapalli East, which was earlier vacated by Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay after winning by two seats.27 AIADMK MLAs are now supporting Palaniswami, while 16 MLAs are aligned with the Velumani-Shanmugam camp.The resignations have triggered sharp political reactions, with Palaniswami accusing the ruling TVK of “horse-trading”.Meanwhile, former AIADMK leader and current Tamil Nadu minister KA Sengottaiyan held Palaniswami responsible for the exodus of party leaders.Sengottaiyan said, “AIADMK remained strong during the leadership of MG Ramachandran and J Jayalalitha. AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami cannot be compared with them; that is why people and party members are moving away from AIADMK.”

New Delhi: Despite marathon meetings with the high command, the tussle between Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his deputy DK Shiv Kumar over the state’s top post does not seem to be ending any time soon.As Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge met the two leaders in Delhi to decide the party’s candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections, the issue of interest remained the long-running leadership struggle.News agency PTI, quoting sources, has reported that the Shivakumar camp is pressurizing Siddaramaiah to leave the top post and has been offered a formula to accommodate him in the central role, which he has not accepted. After the party meeting, Siddaramaiah once again held discussions in the evening with some ministers considered close to him.This comes after the Congress high command held several hours of deliberations with Siddaramaiah and DKS at the Indira Bhawan headquarters.After the meeting, Congress leader KC Venugopal, while talking to reporters, emphasized that there was no discussion on the issue of change of leadership in the meeting attended by Congress President Kharge and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi.Venugopal, who was accompanied by Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar, said, “Today, the entire discussion was focused only on the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections and the (Legislative) Council elections of Karnataka.”Venugopal told the media after the meeting, “Whatever speculations you people are making are only speculations, there is no reality. Today we discussed about Rajya Sabha seats and Legislative Council seats of Karnataka. This is what we have decided today, and nothing else was discussed.” The meetings took place against the backdrop of persistent tension between the Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar camps, almost three years after the Congress returned to power in Karnataka.Before leaving for Delhi from Bengaluru, Siddaramaiah said that he was not aware of the agenda of the meeting.“I have been invited to Delhi. There is a meeting tomorrow (May 26). I don’t know the topic of the meeting. They have called the meeting at 11 am.” Siddaramaiah said, AICC general secretary and MP KC Venugopal called me, told me about the meeting and invited me to attend it.The Congress leadership has intervened several times to manage tensions between the two leaders since the formation of the Karnataka government in 2023. Shivakumar’s supporters have repeatedly claimed that a rotational chief ministerial arrangement was agreed upon when the government was formed, although the Congress high command has never publicly confirmed such a formula.

A software engineer’s viral social media post criticizing life in large gated communities has triggered a widespread online debate on resident welfare associations (RWAs), housing society rules and generational differences in urban living.Shravan Venkataraman, in a thread posted on“At the slightest discomfort in their worldview caused by any person or any family in the society, they start imposing their views on how one should live in the house they are renting/in that society – who can come to visit, who can’t, who can complain, who can’t, etc. And these old people who are also in charge of power – in RWAs or society unions, whenever anyone challenges them on any real issue they go on a power trip,” he wrote.According to Venkataraman, young residents are often better off living in smaller G+3 or G+4 buildings with fewer than 25 apartments, where rules are less intrusive and community interaction is more relaxed.Sharing a personal experience from his housing society in Hyderabad, Venkataraman said there was a theft at his house and when he requested CCTV footage through a residents’ WhatsApp group, he was informed that the cameras were not working. Concerned about security, he advised residents to install personal security cameras.According to him, instead of addressing the security lapse, senior RWA members called him to the club house and reprimanded him for raising the issue publicly.“The next day the RWA president and vice-president called me to the club house. I went there thinking they would solve my problem and they found who had stolen the stuff. Instead they call me and start yelling at me how can I post such complaints on a group of residents and how can I post that there is no safety here and one should take care of oneself – that I am ruining the morale in the society,” he wrote.He further alleged that a committee member sarcastically dismissed the complaint, following which he left the residents’ WhatsApp group.“I mean what do these old people think in their minds? That they can order everyone around with arbitrary rules as per their convenience and everyone must follow it, and especially the tenants?” He added.His post resonated with many netizens, who shared similar experiences of excessive surveillance and micromanagement in the gated society. Many users complained about restrictions on visitors, screening of bachelors, moral policing, and profiling of guests by security guards. One user said that elderly residents of his society also objected to children playing outside, while some others dismissed Venkatraman’s post as merely a complaint against the apartment rules.One user wrote, “Exactly. It’s not just about rules or old ones, high rise clusters have high monthly maintenance, leading to severe water scarcity and severe traffic congestion and pollution. Why does the government encourage high rise clusters when we can develop horizontally.”

Every year, more than 10 lakh candidates spend years of their lives preparing for India’s toughest examination. UPSC Civil Services Preliminary. The cutoff in 2025 was 92.66 points out of 200, meaning even one wrong guess can derail a dream. So when AI tools like ChatGPT, GeminiAnd as the cloud began to be used as a study companion by millions of students, a natural question emerged: could these AIs actually sit exams on their own?We decided to find out. Not with cherry-picked questions or imaginary prompts, but with the real thing, the actual UPSC CSE Prelims GS Paper 1 of 2025 (May 25, 2025) and 2024 (June 16, 2024), official answer keys in hand. We fed all 100 questions of each paper to each AI model individually, recorded each answer, and scored them according to the official answer key.Models tested: ChatGPT (GPT-5, May 2026), Gemini (2.5 Pro), and Cloud (Sonnet 4.5). Everyone was given questions in plain text, with no prompts, no coaching, no prior context.Each AI model was given the same prompt for each question: the question stem was with all options labeled from (A) to (D) and was asked to identify the single correct answer with one-line reasoning. No web search was enabled. No system prompt priming was used. The only advantage any AI had was that whatever it assimilated during training was the same knowledge that a well-prepared human candidate would take to the examination hall.Scoring: UPSC actual marking scheme has been applied: +2 for correct, -0.67 for incorrect, 0 for not attempted. All three AIs attempted all 100 questions.

About 2025 paper

2025 GS Paper 1 was widely described as moderate to difficult. Economics dominated with 18 questions, followed by Environment and Ecology (15), Politics (14), History and Culture (15), and Science and Technology (12). The paper relied heavily on multiple-statement verification questions, the dreaded “How many of the following statements are correct?” format, which penalizes guessing more than simple factual recall. The official general category cutoff was 92.66 points, the highest since 2020.

Final Scorecard: UPSC Prelims 2025

All three AIs crossed the 2025 cutoff of 92.66 points. But margin and subject-wise analysis reveals huge differences in capacity.

Sample Question: How each AI responded

Here is a representative sample of how the three models answered specific questions from the 2025 paper with official correct answers.

Gemini had the strongest performance overall, driven primarily by better management of current affairs and environmental questions. On the question about the Nature Solutions Finance Hub for Asia and the Pacific (which the AIIB plans to launch in late 2024), Gemini correctly identified the AIIB, while both ChatGPT and Cloud incorrectly identified the ADB, suggesting that Gemini remembered more recent institutional events. Gemini also outperformed rivals on the Gooty Tarantula question, direct air capture application and non-cooperation program details. Where Gemini went wrong was in science and technology, showing that it sometimes overgeneralizes in technical areas.Best Subject: History and Culture (87%). Worst subject: Science and Technology (67%).

ChatGPT GPT-5: Persistent but cautious (73/100, ~118 points)

ChatGPT delivered solid, consistent performance across all subjects. Its strengths were politics and history, subjects where years of UPSC-specific training data give it a strong base. Its notable weaknesses were in the environment and current affairs. On the CL-20/HMX/LLM-105 question, ChatGPT chose explosives rather than the more specific cruise missile fuel answer, reflecting his tendency toward broader, more familiar categories rather than precise technical distinctions.Best subject: Polity (79%). Worst subject: Current Affairs (57%).

Cloud Sonnet 4.5: Reliable reasoner, gaps in specs (68/100, ~112 points)

Claude passed the cutoff but with the smallest margin of the three. Its strongest performance came in the structured reasoning questions, Statement I/Statement II format that has become the hallmark of UPSC. On questions requiring logical assessment of causal relationships between statements, Claude was particularly more careful. However, Cloud struggled with specific current affairs and environment related questions and was the only AI to get the Mahajanapada-Rivers pair wrong, a staple of UPSC History preparation.Best subjects: Politics and reasoning questions (79%). Worst subject: Environment (60%).

History and Culture: Revision, Zero Sleep, Full Score All three AIs scored 80% or higher on the history questions. Questions about Fa Hien, Rajendra I, Araghatta irrigation and Ashoka administration were handled with confidence. These are textbook questions where the training data is rich and clear.Current Affairs and Environment: Accuracy DeclinesThis is where the test separates humans from machines. Questions about which institution launched a specific fund in late 2024, or about the exact habitat status of the obscure Indian spider, depend on highly specific or very recent knowledge. ChatGPT and Cloud scored only 57% on current affairs. The irony is sharp: the AI ​​models, which millions of aspirants use to follow current affairs, themselves get frustrated by current affairs in the exam.Science and Technology: Tough on Technical DetailsThis section produced the most surprising failures. Questions about the CL-20, HMX, and LLM-105 affected all three AIs to varying degrees. Direct air capture technology applications also created confusion. AI models handle broad conceptual science and technical questions well but stumble over precise technical distinctions in specific domains.

UPSC Prelims 2024 was a little easier with a cutoff of 88 marks. When tested on a 30-question sample from 2024, all three AIs performed 2-5 percentage points better. An important real-world data point: In 2024, an IIT-founded AI app called PadAI, trained exclusively on UPSC data and dynamically updated with current affairs, scored between 170 to 185 points at the exam venue. Meanwhile, generic ChatGPT scored only 75 marks in the same exam and failed to cross the cutoff. By 2025-26, the gap has narrowed dramatically. GPT-5 and Gemini 2.5 Pro now pass the preliminary exam without any UPSC-specific training.

So can AI really crack UPSC?

Clearing prelims is table stakes. UPSC has three stages: Preliminary, Main (Descriptive), and Personality Test (Interview). In Mains, candidates are asked to write analytical answers of 200 words demonstrating original thinking, policy awareness and ability to link historical precedent with contemporary governance. No AI can currently sit the mains exam, not because of lack of knowledge, but because the assessment itself is fundamentally different.Personality test is a structured interview before senior IAS officers in which character, leadership abilities and decision making under ambiguity are assessed. This is not the case in any language model.What AI has done is raised the floor. Any candidate who uses these tools wisely for concept clarity, answer-writing practice and faster revision walks into the examination hall better prepared than the generation before him.

What does this mean for candidates

Questions where all three AIs failed, specific recent events, precise wildlife conservation details, nuanced institutional knowledge, these are exactly the questions that set the toppers apart from the rest. An AI that scored 76% in the preliminary exam could be a powerful study partner. But the remaining 24% requires human discipline i.e. following the news daily, reading the environment section of the newspaper and remembering the specific year when a convention came into force. There are no shortcuts there, AI or otherwise.UPSC examinees are aware of this scenario. In 2025, around 22 to 28 per cent of questions in GS Paper 1 can be classified as current affairs-adjacent, based on events and institutional developments of the last 12 to 18 months. For AI models with training cutoffs, this is a structural blind spot. For candidates relying heavily on AI for current affairs preparation, this is a warning.

final call

Yes, AI can crack UPSC Prelims in 2026. All three major models pass above the cutoff by a reasonable margin. But clearing Prelims is not cracking UPSC. The exam is designed to test the qualities that are hardest to automate: sustained multi-year preparation, real-time current awareness, analytical writing, and human judgment under pressure. The performance of AI on this paper is an honest picture of that reality.