The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) on Tuesday continued to maintain that the 18 disqualified Members of Legislative Assembly (MLA) would return to its camp, notwithstanding rebuttals by supporters of independent legislator T.T.V. Dhinakaran.
D. Jayakumar, Fisheries Minister, asserted that “what is bound to happen will happen,” ( kaalathin kattayam ) and the rebels would come back to the ruling camp. In the day’s issue of the party’s organ Puratchi Thalaivi Namadhu Amma, a piece of poetry was published expressing the hope. Reminding the rebels that they got their position because of former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, the poem stated that the former legislators were in a “fix” over their present situation and alluded that the Mr. Dhinakaran’s victory in the R.K. Nagar byelection last December was due to a “collusion” between him and the DMK.
Gokula Indira, organising secretary, said Mr. Dhinakaran had been “teasing” the present leadership of the AIADMK through his statements of “having got sleeper cells” in the ruling camp. But it looked like the Dhinakaran group was “cracking,” if one were to go by recent observations of Thanga Tamilselvan, former legislator of Andipatti and a prominent supporter of Mr. Dhinakaran, that he had decided to withdraw his petition, challenging disqualification.
However, Mr. Thanga Tamilselvan challenged the Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami to take steps for getting at least one of the 18 former legislators to the AIADMK. ”If that happens, I would go and join them [the ruling camp],” he asserted.
