THOOTHUKUDI: There is not even a single soul in the Thoothukudi district unit of the ruling AIADMK to shed tears for the Rajya Sabha MP, L. Sasikala Pushpa, whom party general secretary and Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa expelled on Monday in the wake of the ‘slapping episode’ involving DMK MP, Tiruchi N. Siva.
Instead the woman MP’s ‘fall’ has made the party ranks in Thoothukudi district more happy than her quick growth in the party through successive posts like joint secretary of youth brigade, deputy secretary of state women’s wing, Thoothukudi mayor and the AIADMK state women’s wing secretary since she entered the party in 2008. That rapid rise had dismayed many senior leaders, who were sidelined in her elevation.
According to the Thoothukudi district joint secretary of the MGR youth wing, Sathya Lakshmanan, who directly took on Sasikala Pushpa when she was Thoothukudi mayor, the latter with no cadre following here managed to ‘snatch’ top positions in the party with the help of some of the senior ministers.
Believed to be obdurate in nature, Sasikala Pushpa speaking so deliberately against out party general secretary (in Rajya Sabha on Monday) is not unusual, said Sathya Lakshmanan, who remembered the expelled AIADMK MP, openly mocking at the state minister from Thoothukudi district, Shanmuganathan and the Thoothukudi district collector, Ravikumar “in indecent manner without giving respect to their posts,” when Thoothukudi was reeling under floods last year.
There were also complaints about Sasikala Pushpa showing scant respect for higher administrative officers as she, as Thoothukudi mayor, openly challenged the then Thoothukudi district collector, Asish Kumar, in identifying land for the construction of a new integrated bus stand in the port-town.
“She opposed the bus stand project despite it being promised by our Amma,” recalled Sathya Lakshmanan, adding that Sasikala Pushpa’s ‘fall’, however, started in the party much earlier in January this year, when she was divested of her post as the state secretary of the women’s wing.
The AIADMK party cadres did not come out to protest against Sasikala Pushpa’s remarks on Monday. Still, a few pelted stones at the house of Sasikala Pushpa’s husband at Karaisuthuuvari in Tirunelveli district. Her husband, Lingeswara Thilagar, who is in Chennai, however, distanced himself from his wife’s allegations against the AIADMK leadership stating that he would always be loyal to ‘Amma’.
