The action against T.T.V. Dhinakaran had to be taken as his decision of providing different positions to a host of people would, if not challenged, have confused and demoralised workers of the party, a senior member of Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami’s camp said on Thursday.
Referring to Mr. Dhinakaran’s move of appointing 18 persons as organising secretaries, he asked whether there was any need for having so many organising secretaries. “Will this not be ridiculed?” he asked, adding that many of the new appointees are those who were sidelined by former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa for “non-performance.”
A precondition
Asked why the Chief Minister’s camp, which remained together with Mr. Dhinakaran till mid-April, had chosen to part ways with him now, he said it had become a precondition for the merger of the two factions. “Otherwise, we will be left without the ‘Two Leaves’ symbol,” he said.
Options limited
Another reason is that only if the party disassociates itself from the family of the jailed interim general secretary V.K. Sasikala, it can salvage its public image. “Mr. Dhinakaran himself had realised this, and during the campaign for the now-aborted R.K. Nagar byelection, he did not focus on his aunt,” he said.
