Ramadoss demotes son ahead of meet with Shah

Chennai:In a striking move, founder of the PMK S. Ramadoss nominated himself as the president of the 36-year-old party for the first time by demoting his son Anbumani Ramadoss as working president and elevating former president G.K. Mani as honorary president on Thursday bringing to the fore the simmering resentment among the cadre, some of whom vowed to rally around Dr Anbumani Ramadoss.

Mr Ramadoss made the announcement of his becoming the president of the party that he founded in 1989 at a press conference in his traditional Thailapuram residence in Villupuram district just a day before senior BJP leader and Union home minister Amit Shah is scheduled to meet allies and potential allies for the 2026 Assembly elections in Chennai.

The rift between Dr Ramadoss and his son is common knowledge and it had come out in the open on December 28, 2024 when the two fought it out openly at the party’s special general council meeting at Pattannur, near Puducherry, over the appointment of Parasuram Mukunthan as party’s state youth wing president. However, there was no such coup like operation earlier.

The acrimonious exchange on stage saw Dr Ramadoss asserting himself by stating that he was the founder of the PMK and that anyone not abiding by his decisions were free to leave. Dr Ramadoss also reminded everyone that he was the one who launched the Vanniyar Sangam in 1980, spearheaded a road block agitation in 1987, in which 21 persons were killed, and then started the PMK.

Taking credit for the growth of the party that managed to send its representatives to function as local body members to Union ministers, he said he worked for getting MBC status for the Vanniyar community and that he had worked at the grassroots level by visiting 95,000 villages.

After the spat at Pattannur, Dr Anbumani Ramadoss had started a separate office at Panaiyur and had been meeting his supporters there. Apart from the differences he had with his father over the appointment of Mukunthan, who is the grandson of Dr Ramadoss through his daughter Gandhimathi, they did not see eye to eye on the issue of forging alliances.

While Dr Anbumani Ramadoss has always preferred hobnobbing with the BJP, PMK’s present ally, the father wanted to ally with the AIADMK or the DMK and never was in favour of the BJP. He had recently criticised the Union budget openly, saying it contained nothing for the people; and quoted C.N. Annadurai to drive home the redundancy of the governor’s post.

Questions have been raised in political circles if the father wanted to thwart the son’s meeting with Shah on Friday by stripping him of the party president post, which he had been holding since 2022, to take charge of the negotiations for the alliance. Dr Ramadoss had assured the party cadre that he would get ministers for his party by striking a proper alliance for 2026.

Observers also point at the possibility of a palace intrigue as Dr Anbumani Ramadoss had already introduced his wife Sowmiya Anbumani to politics – she contested the Lok Sabha elections from Dharmapuri and came close to winning the seat – and his daughters had campaigned for the mother. The other members of the family, however, resented the neglect of the rest of the Ramadoss children.

But since Dr Anbumani Ramadoss vehemently opposed the induction of his nephew Mukunthan as youth wing secretary, some members of the family wanted him to be cut to size and that prompted the founder to take over the party, some speculate.

Whether the fight between the son and father is over ideology – to align with the BJP or not – or over filial issues like letting in a daughter’s offspring, it is an internal matter of the PMK that would be sorted out among the cadre and leaders.