DMK president M.K. Stalin’s appeal to AIADMK cadre to join his party has triggered a debate on whether he is eyeing the vote bank of the ruling party.
In his speech during an event welcoming members of other parties into the DMK in Theni on Sunday, Mr. Stalin dwelt on the relationship between his father and former Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi and AIADMK founder and another former Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran. The DMK leader also recalled how former CM Jayalalithaa had stoutly opposed the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET). Welcoming those who joined the organisation, Mr. Stalin described the DMK as their “parent party”.
Thanga Tamilselvan, who had a long stint in the AIADMK and was the AMMK’s candidate for the Theni Parliamentary constituency in the recent Lok Sabha polls before joining the DMK, said Mr. Stalin had made the observations as the AIADMK, in its present form, was not the party that was founded by MGR. As the DMK chief recognised the qualities of hard work and dedication on the part of the AIADMK cadre, he naturally wanted them to join the DMK which, Mr. Thanga Tamilselvan said, should be regarded as the “original home” of the cadre.
However, AIADMK spokesperson Kovai Sathyan ridiculed this contention, saying Mr. Stalin did not have the moral authority to call his party a “Dravidian party”, as the Opposition had “long ago abandoned the Dravidian ideology and there is no inner party democracy”. Besides, the DMK was being “run by a single family”, he said, adding that there was a clear distinction between “families associated with a party and a family running a party for over 50 years”.
G. Palanithurai, former professor of political science at Gandhigram Rural Institute, concurred with the view that the DMK was seeking to woo the cadre of the AIADMK. He said the ongoing trend of ‘centralisation’, as seen in initiatives like the Goods and Services Tax and ‘One Nation, One Ration Card’, was against the grain of Tamil Nadu, and Mr. Stalin was making efforts to capitalise on the situation by projecting himself as a strong critic of the trend and appealing to those sections in the AIADMK that were opposed to it.
