Chennai: More than three weeks after severing ties with the BJP in an unceremonious manner, the AIADMK is struggling to convince the people of the State that the break is final and that it will not go back to the BJP fold at any cost if one were to go by what the general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami told functionaries on the occasion the party’s 52nd founding day.
Marking the anniversary with a meeting of the party’s recently appointed 82 in-charges, one for every party district, to oversee the functioning of the booth committees all over the State, Palaniswami told the top honchos – it is the senior leaders who have been entrusted with the job of managing the booth committees – that a campaign was on to misinform the people that the split was just a drama and the two parties would patch up after the polls.
He wanted his party leaders to go and tell the people that there was absolutely no scope for the revival of ties with the BJP and also informed them that the alliance led by the AIADMK in the State was poised for further expansion as more parties were willing to join hands in the days to come.
Though Palaniswami did not identify the parties that were willing to come over to the AIADMK fold, he exuded confidence of forming a formidable alliance against the DMK by telling the party leaders that the voters needed to be told about the decision to never go back to the BJP to make a clean sweep of all the 40 seats in the State and neighbouring Puducherry in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The assertion that the party would not return to the BJP fold needs to be made clearly in the present context since the AIADMK is talking to some Muslim parties, particularly those having some following of young people, with a view to roping them in. So those party leaders might also be seeking an assurance from the AIADMK that it would maintain its old secular credentials.
As part of the 52nd-anniversary celebrations of the AIADMK, Palaniswami and his party leaders garlanded the statues of party founder M G Ramachandran and former general secretary J Jayalalithaa at the premises of the party headquarters after arriving there to a rousing welcome by his supporters.
He also distributed relief to the families of 62 party workers who passed away in recent times, particularly those who died in accidents during the party’s recent revival conference at Madurai. The relief amount worked out to a total of Rs 1.03 crore with payments differing from family to family.
In his speech, Palaniswami urged the leaders to work hard towards setting up the women’s wings at various levels and told them to take the initiative themselves without waiting for the district secretaries to act. Only then would they be able to realize the goal of winning all the 40 seats, he said.
That way, the party leaders made use of the anniversary celebrations – posters had appeared on walls across Chennai hailing Palaniswami as ‘Puratchi Tamizhar’ (Revolutionary Tamilin) and welcoming him to the event – to focus on the coming elections by starting the work on reinforcing the booth committees.
