Chief Minister M K Stalin
Chennai: The overwhelming victory in the Erode East Assembly by-election and a series of storms in the AIADMK teacup have led to the DMK speculating on the AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami losing his grip over the party, whose cadre, as Law Minister S Regupathy claimed, had already started gravitating towards the DMK.
While Regupathy told the media at Anna Arivalayam, the DMK headquarters, on Monday that the four years of good governance provided by the DMK had led to the people supporting the party which was reflected in the 1,50,709 votes that it garnered in the just concluded Erode East Assembly polls.
The 34,817 votes that the AIADMK got in 2024 had come to the DMK, the Minister said, while the speeches of former Ministers on some occasions have created the doubt if Palaniswami was still in charge of the party.
A sign of rebellion was perceptible when senior leader of the AIADMK, K A Sengottaiyan, kept away from the meeting organized to felicitate Palaniswami for ensuring that the Athikadavu-Avinashi irrigation project, conceived 67 years ago, in the Kongu region became a reality – the project was commissioned in August by Chief Minister M K Stalin – and then blamed the organisers for not giving due credit to party icons M G Ramachandran and J Jayalalithaa.
While AIADMK organization secretary D Jayakumar made light of the ‘boycott’ by saying that the felicitation was organized by the farmers of the region and hence the party had no say on dictating whose pictures should be on the invitation – the ruse of Sengottaiyan was that though he had pointed out that the photographs of MGR and Jayalalithaa were not in the invitation in advance no amends were made.
Jayakumar was addressing the media when he came to the party headquarters in Chennai for an event called to inaugurate the New Delhi party office by Palaniswami through video conference. Though all top honchos attended the meeting, Sengottaiyan was conspicuous by his absence .
Apart from Sengottaiyan not attending that event on Saturday, rumours started making the rounds about him secretly hobnobbing with V K Sasikala, a former general secretary, whom Palaniswami had vowed not to let into the party again.
In another party meeting, a former Minister Gokula Indira had openly resented that senior leaders were not getting due respect in the party and there was no way of airing grievances with the general secretary, causing a flutter at the event.
When asked about it, Jayakumar had said that the senior leader could have approached the general secretary directly instead of airing such views in public forums. Other party seniors have also expressed dissatisfaction over the functioning of Palaniswami, particularly his stand on reviving the electoral alliance with the BJP.
The general complaint of many groups in the party is that Palaniswami was unable to forge alliances with other parties but asserting that he would take care of it when the election comes and asking the leaders to not bother about it. Since the 2026 Assembly polls would be the last opportunity to salvage the party, the leaders, fearing a repeat of the past fiascos, want something to be done immediately, which Palaiiswami is resisting.
