Chennai: The AIADMK’s Executive Committee meeting scheduled to be held this Friday, August 16, is likely to be a stormy one as AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami could find himself in the firing line as some top honchos are gearing up to take him to task for the continuous electoral debacles of the party and blame him for not channelising the traditional party votes.
A group of leaders who hold the view that there was no harm in allowing ousted general secretary V K Sasikala to return to the party fold could question him on his strategy for the 2026 Assembly elections and even suggest that an ‘united AIADMK’ could be a panacea for the present maladies of the party.
Sasikala, who still claims to be the AIADMK general secretary and flies the party flag on the bonnet of her vehicle with aplomb, is also setting out on a four day tour of southern districts, purportedly to meet the people and interact with them about issues concerning their lives.
In her earlier tour she was received by knots of people waving the AIADMK flag and she too was asked to hoist the party flag at all her stopovers, giving the events a semblance of the AIADMK carnival, though Palaiswami had issued strict instructions to his party cadre and workers not to entertain Sasikala in any way.
So, even if those holding posts in the AIADMK would keep off the meetings organized for Sasikala to interact with people and hoist the party flag, supporters might flock the venues, creating a general impression that the former close aide of J Jayalalithaa still has a support base in the party.
In fact, Sasikala had been claiming that a ‘united AIADMK’ could romp home in the elections and that the party had been losing more than 10 elections in a row only because her supporters were not voting for Palaniswami.
So those leaders who also subscribe to that idea might raise the question of re-admitting her into the party at the Executive that has been called primarily to work out a strategy for the 2026 Assembly elections.
Since Palaniswami has been ardently opposing the idea of letting Sasikala and also O Panneerselvam, former Chief Minister, come into the party fold again, it is believed that he would only dig in his heels and refuse to entertain requests for a rethink on his views.
Though it is unlikely that any top leader might challenge Palaniswami openly, the party’s poor faring in the past elections will be discussed and there could be some leaders who might blame it on the present leadership’s ineptness and also the existing rift that has kept leaders like Sasikala and Panneerselvam out of party.
Sensing possible trouble at the Executive, Palaniswami is said to have worked out a strategy to handle the naysayers and to not give in to their demands. One of them is that Palaniswami could promise the party leaders that he would forge a formidable alliance with other parties which would weaken the position of the DMK coalition in the State.
It is rumoured that talks were on with the PMK and the Naam Tamilar Katchi of Seeman to rope them in as allies of the AIADMK for the 2026 elections. By making a back of the envelope calculation by adding up the vote shares of those parties, Palaniswami believes that he could muster the numbers to capture power in 2026. He might use the Executive meeting to lay the foundation for such a move.
