AIADMK announces public meetings to expose DMK ‘misrule’

A file picture of AIADMK General Secretary J. Jayalalithaa. Photo: Rajeev Bhatt.

A year to go for Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, AIADMK will hit the streets with a series of public meetings from February 24, synchronising with 62nd birthday of its chief Jayalalithaa, to expose DMK’s “misrule“.

AIADMK has announced the programme at a time when the party has been hit by desertions with at least five of its MLAs either leaving the party to join arch rival DMK or sending feelers to it.

Public meetings highlighting previous AIADMK rule’s achievements and DMK regime’s “apathy” would be held for five days starting from Jayalalithaa’s birthday in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka and New Delhi, party propaganda secretary and MP M. Thambidurai said in a release on Wednesday.

Different wings of the party have been asked to make all arrangements for the public meetings, he added.

Ms. Jayalalithaa had on Monday urged her party men to refrain from indulging in any grandeur to celebrate her birthday “at a time when the state is on the path of destruction due to DMK’s misrule”, and asked them to organise mass feeding and blood donation camps.

Defying Ms. Jayalalithaa’s diktat to not to have any links with DMK men, two of her party MLAs recently called on her

bete noire DMK president and Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, seeking “redressal” of constituency-related grievances.

Even normal contacts between leaders and legislators are considered taboo in the rigid political structures of the two principal Dravidian parties.

Both Mr. Karunanidhi and Ms. Jayalalithaa, whose party’s morale is low after a string of electoral defeats since its loss in 2006 assembly polls, have recently said none can finish off their parties.

An MLA had quit AIADMK last year to join DMK while another was expelled by her for being seen with DMK ministers in public functions and two legislators also lost their party posts for meeting the ruling party leaders recently.