AIADMK Faction May Break Away And Stand By Vijay

Chennai: With a fear of many AIADMK MLAs, out of the total 47 who have been just elected to the Assembly, defecting from the party under the stewardship of senior leader and MP C V Shanmugham to support the Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK) looming large, party leaders sequestered a group in a private resort in Puducherry and made arrangements for their stay there on Thursday.

At least 20 MLAs arrived at the Shore Trishvam resort on Wednesday night, reports said. Whether they were all supporters of Shanmugham, a Rajya Sabha MP who have also won an MLA seat now, is not clear since AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami reportedly visited the resort later on Thursday and spoke to them.

But rumours have it that Shanmugham was aspiring for a ministerial berth in the new government to be led by C Joseph Vijay and was engineering the large scale defection in the AIADMK. Among the MLAs reportedly put up at the Shore Trishvam resort are Balakrishna Reddy, L Jayasudha, A P Jayasankaran, S M Sukumar O S Manian, Velu, S Jayakumar, Karuppanan, Vijayabaskar, S Sekhar, Venkatachalam, Maragatham, Rajasekar, Ramachandran, Mani, Palaniswamy, Mohan, Rajendran and Thalavai Sundaram.

While it was speculated that Shanmugham has left for New Delhi, where he might resign his Rajya Sabha seat to take the plunge into State politics, it is not clear as to how his group, with a support of 20 MLAs, would escape the provisions of the anti-defection law that would require about 32 members to form an independent group.

So the only option for Shanmugham would be to incite rebellion in the AIADMK and make many more MLAs defect to the party and then cobble up a dissident’s group. But Shanmugham has denied engineering any defection in the party while it has not been explained why the MLAs have been sequestered in the resort.

In another development, some AIADMK leaders like K P Munusamy were striving to ensure the continuation of ‘Dravidian Rule’ in the State and have approached the DMK to support them. If the DMK could support the AIADMK from outside, possibilities for the formation of an AIADMK government could be explored and the TVK kept out of power.

But those prepared to support the TVK were against it and could start a rebellion against the party leadership. Their argument is that the DMK was the prime enemy of the AIADMK that was founded to fight that party.

The results of the Assembly elections have thus caused more disruptions in the AIADMK than anywhere else and ambitious leaders in the AIADMK could make use of the prevailing chaotic situation to further their political agendas.