Chennai, March 28 () The election of K. Palaniswami (EPS) as the General Secretary of the AIADMK can give a fresh vigour and vitality to the party as it will have a single power centre from now on.
The election of EPS as General Secretary was announced by the party Election Commissioners Natham R., Viswanathan and Pollachi V. Jayaraman, after the Madras High Court rejected a bunch of petitions submitted by rival leader O. Panneerselvam (OPS) and his associates including Manoj Pandian, J.D.R. Prabhakaran and others.
Palaniswami will be the third General Secretary of the party after its founder M.G. Ramachandran (MGR) and J.Jayalalithaa, two towering leaders who made the party a formidable force in Tamil Nadu.
The AIADMK, which had dual power centres in Palaniswami and Panneerselvam, had faced back to back electoral defeats since the 2019 general elections. While the party retained its supremacy in the western belt of Tamil Nadu, the fiefdom of Palaniswami, it lost miserably in the strongholds of Panneerselvam including his own turf of Theni.
Immediately after he was declared General Secretary, Palaniswami told media persons that the cadres of the party had voted in favour of him and thanked all those who stood with him. With the AIADMK alliance with the BJP in Tamil Nadu going through a difficult phase, his decision owhether to continue with the alliance or to dump it will be vital for the future progress of the party.
Sources in the AIADMK told that the overwhelming opinion in the party is to break the relationship with the BJP and to get maximum seats in the Lok Sabha elections of 2024 and reassert the position of the party in state politics. The AIADMK, according to party insiders, has already entered into confabulation with parties like the VCK, a Dalit political outfit presently with the DMK front, the nationalistic NTK, and the DMDK) of actor-politician Vijayakanth.
The AIADMK think tanks are of the opinion that such a front would lead to the support of the minority Muslim community in the polls as they form strong vote banks in many constituencies of Tamil Nadu.
The party has been sore over the back to back insulting remarks made by BJP state President K. Annamalai, and a majority of senior AIADMK leaders, according to party sources, want the leadership to snap the relationship with the BJP and scout for new partners.
The emergence of Palaniswamu as the sole leader of the party would make matters easy for the party to enter into fresh permutations and combinations for the ensuing Lok Sabha polls.
aal/vd