Chennai: Media savvy Congress MLA S. Vijayadharani’s lucky streak may have ended in the party.
Late Friday, the AICC stripped Vijayadharani of the state Mahila Congress president post and replaced her with the grand daughter of veteran party Dalit MLA A.S. Ponnammal’s granddaughter Jhansi Rani.
A statement issued by Congress general secretary Janardan Dwivedi alluded to Jhansi Rani s appointment.
However, no reason was cited for the change of guard at the Congress state women’s wing helm.
Party sources privy to the development conceded that the appointment of Jhansi Rani had happened at Elangovan’s behest.
“AICC general secretary in charge of Mukul Wasnik instructed national Mahila Congress president Shobha Osha to get Vijayadharani to resign her post late Thursday. However, the MLA refused and hence the announcement by Dwivedi this afternoon,” a senior functionary requesting anonymity told Deccan Chronicle.
Sources close to EVKS gladly confided that Shobha Osha, who probed the public fight between the incumbent TNCC chief and Vijayadharani late November, had tabled a report to Rahul Gandhi, indicting the MLA for the police complaints preferred against Elangovan by two Mahila Congress functionaries then.
The MLA’s sidekicks reasoned that the police complaint episode was done and dusted long back as both parties withdrew the complaint after AICC’s tutelage on settling intra-party differences.
Strangely, the police complaint is too lame an excuse for the MLA to get the pink slip, given that the same Vijayadharani had paraded her lieutenants, including the two complainants, before Sonia Gandhi besides a photo op at ‘10 Janpath’ shortly after the ugly standoff with Elangovan, tempting observers to construe that the sacked Mahila Congress president may be a collateral damage in a larger political war between Elangovan and Chidambaram.
