The Madras High Court is slated to hold a special sitting on Sunday to hear an urgent plea moved by the AIADMK’s expelled leaders, P.H. Manoj Pandian, R. Vaithilingam and J.C.D. Prabhakar, to stay the election to the post of general secretary.
Justice K. Kumaresh Babu would hear the interim applications filed by the three litigants through their counsel-on-record S. Elambharathi who shot a mail to Registrar (Judicial) M.N. Senthil Kumar on Saturday, seeking an urgent hearing since Sunday was the last date for the filing of nominations.
In his affidavit, Mr. Pandian said all three litigants had already filed civil suits before the High Court challenging certain resolutions that the general council passed on July 11, 2022, for expelling them from the primary membership, besides reviving the post of general secretary that was abolished in 2017.
They had also prayed for an interim injunction restraining the party from implementing the resolutions, and the matter was argued at length on Friday when counsel for the AIADMK obtained time till April 11 for filing counter-affidavits to all the three applications seeking interim relief.
“After seeking an adjournment to complete the pleadings and thereby evading grant of interim relief as against holding elections to the illegally revived post of general secretary... that very same evening, the defendants have issued a notification announcing elections to the post,” the affidavit read.
Such an attempt to hold the election in a tearing hurry during the weekend was wholly “illegal, mischievous and nothing but an attempt to side-step the due process”, Mr. Pandian said. Claiming that the three litigants would be put to grave hardship if the election was allowed, he urged the court to stay it.
Only three contest
It was also brought to the notice of the court that the July 11, 2022 general council meeting had amended the party bylaws and introduced “unreasonable” conditions for eligibility to contest for the post of general secretary. As per the new conditions, a maximum of three candidates could contest, he said.
The new conditions require a contestant to have been proposed by 10 district secretaries and seconded by 10 other district secretaries. Further, each district secretary could either propose or second only one candidate. Since there were a total of 75 district secretaries in the party, only three candidates could contest, he said.
Mr. Pandian also stated that yet another amendment required the contestants to have served in a top post in the party headquarters for a minimum of five years. Such a condition constricts the number of contestants, and that was one of the reasons for the plaintiffs to challenge the amendments, he claimed.
“The said amendments go against the founding ethos, the basic structure and the history of inner-party democracy of the AIADMK.Right from the party’s formation, the bylaws have always envisaged that any primary member of the party can contest in elections to the post of general secretary,” he added.
Eternal general secy.
It was further contended that the general council meeting ought not to have revived the post of general secretary, which was abolished on September 12, 2017 after it was declared that former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa would remain the eternal general secretary of the party.
“The clear import of the resolutions passed in 2017 was that no single leader could ever rise to the stature of the previous general secretaries who were towering personalities of super eminent stature...This sentiment was engrafted into the bylaws which abolished the post of general secretary for all times to come,” the plaintiff concluded.
