Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam leader T.T.V. Dhinakaran on Sunday challenged the ruling AIADMK to match his organisational capacity saying they would fail miserably.
Addressing a public meeting here, he said the ministers, who were going around the state saying even a thousand Dhinakarans would not be able to destabilise the Edappadi Palaniswami government, could not stop his victory in the by-election to the Dr. Radhakrishnan Nagar Assembly constituency [as an Independent candidate last year].
“With the Government under their control, the ‘two-leaves’ symbol in their hands, 33 ministers campaigning in the by-election and even after bribing voters, they still bit the dust. They failed to face me and what reply does the AIADMK have to today’s meeting [citing the crowd turnout],” he postured.
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Political legitimacy
Seeking to assert his political legitimacy, Mr. Dhinakaran said it was the then AIADMK general secretary Jayalalithaa who had fielded him as a party candidate in Periyakulam for the Parliamentary polls in 1999 and he did not enter politics through the rear door, as some had alleged.Those people who had helped him in the campaign by carrying party flags were now trying to question his political legitimacy; he said referring to Municipal Administration Minister S.P. Velumani.
“Those who are in power today by betraying Sasikala and me will do well to remember that their days are numbered,” he said.
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The Madras High Court verdict on the 18 MLAs’ disqualification case or the bomb that was ticking in the form of the egg-supply scam unearthed during recent raids in Tiruchengode and other places would be the undoing of the present government, he claimed.
The party’s organising secretary V. Senthil Balaji challenged the Chief Minister to dissolve the government or resign and face elections to prove his strength. “If Mr. Palaniswami were to emerge victorious, I would commit suicide,” Mr. Balaji said.