Sidelined AIADMK deputy general secretary T.T.V. Dhinakaran on Monday evening warned Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami against conducting the party’s general council meeting on Tuesday against what he said was a “stay order” from a court in Bengaluru.
“If situation warranted, the Edappadi Palaniswami government would be sent home and an acceptable leader would be brought in to run the government for the remaining term,” he told journalists.
Mr. Dhinakaran contended that the Bengaluru City Civil Court had stayed the conduct of Tuesday’s general council meeting. “Despite the court directive, if they conducted the meeting, the high command will initiate action from thereon...We will bring down this government,” he warned.
Though the AIADMK’s principal political enemy is the DMK, Mr. Dhinakaran alleged that the Ministers, who claimed to follow Amma ’s (Jayalalithaa) ideologies, were interested only in clinging to power. “We are only trying to save the party and its image and they (Palaniswami and O. Panneerselvam) were indulging in mud-slinging,” he said.
According to him, the Chief Minister and his Cabinet colleagues were keen to hold on to power, and in the process, they have forgotten the people of Tamil Nadu and betrayed the party’s interests.
He claimed that the rank and file in the party, who were upset over the happenings, were told to remain calm. Now, the time has come for the high command to act – “all in the interest of the party and people of Tamil Nadu.”
The AIADMK (Amma) Karnataka unit state secretary V.A. Pugazhendhi, who filed a petition in Bengaluru challenging the general council meet, told The Hindu over phone that the bylaws of the parent party, AIADMK, were not adhered to while convening the meeting. There was no signatory to the invitation to general council members, which should have been sent 15 days ahead of the scheduled meeting. But, he received the invitation only on September 6 and those who had planned to conduct the meeting were “not competent” to call the meeting, he added.
G. Sukumaran, his lawyer, said that even if the two factions considered themselves distinct from the parent party, only the bylaws of the AIADMK had been cited with regard to the general council’s meeting.
However, A. Anwhar Raajhaa, Ramanathapuram’s Member of Parliament and secretary of the minorities wing of the AIADMK (Amma), sought to drive home the point that at present, only the two factions – Amma and PTA – were in existence and what was applicable to the AIADMK would not hold good now.
A court in Bengaluru on Monday passed a temporary injunction restraining the merged factions of the AIADMK from interfering with the functioning of Mr. Pugazhendhi, Secretary (Karnataka State unit), and also members of the executive committee and general council of AIADMK (Amma).
(With inputs from T. Ramakrishnan in Chennai and Krishna Prasad in Bengaluru)
