Chennai: TTV Dinakaran, one of the members of the extended Mannargudi family who were expelled from the party by late Jayalalithaa in 2011, was on Wednesday named as the deputy general secretary of AIADMK.
The appointment by AIADMK general secretary VK Sasikala is being seen as a desperate move by her family to keep the party under their control. Deccan Chronicle had reported in its Wednesday edition that Ms Sasikala would choose her nephew Mr Dinakaran to lead the party in her absence.
Two hours before Ms Sasikala was to proceed on a 6-hour journey to Bengaluru to surrender before the trial court, the AIADMK sent out two press releases in a matter of just 10 minutes. The first release said Mr Dinakaran and Dr S.Venkatesh, another member of the Mannargudi family, have been re-inducted into the party, while the second one said Ms Sasikala has appointed Mr Dinakaran as the deputy general secretary.
Mr Dinakaran and Mr Venkatesh were expelled from the AIADMK along with M Natarajan, Ms Sasikala's estranged husband, in 2011 and were kept away from Poes Garden as long as Jayalalithaa was alive. While inducting both into the party again, Ms Sasikala said they have been taken back after they expressed regret for their acts in person and through letters and requested that they be allowed to join the party.
While leaders from the Sasikala camp quickly defended the move saying Mr Dinakaran has been with the party for the past 25 years and had served in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, Tirunelveli strongman Karuppusamy Pandian, who joined the AIADMK after quitting the DMK last year, protested against the decision and quit from the primary membership of the party.
Sources said Ms Sasikala decided to revive the deputy general secretary post and hand it over to Mr Dinakaran as she did not want to lose her grip over the AIADMK towards which she ensured that all the powerful posts were kept within the family. As deputy general secretary, Mr Dinakaran will be responsible for running the AIADMK while Ms Sasikala will be locked away in prison in Bengaluru.
Mr Dinakaran's detractors say the appointment has come close on the heels of the Madras High Court confirming the penalty of Rs 25 crore imposed on him by the Directorate of Enforcement in the 1996 case.
Maitreyan dismisses appoinment of Dinakaran as deputy general secy
V. Maitreyan, the AIADMK Rajya Sabha MP who is now with the OPS camp, dismissed the appointment of T.T.V. Dinakaran as deputy general secretary, saying Ms Sasikala has no powers to appoint anyone since she is just a “temporary general secretary” of the party.
Mr Maitreyan said on wednesday that though the post of deputy general secretary had existed on several occasions during late Jayalalithaa's tenure, the revival of the post by Ms Sasikala is invalid.
“A general secretary is empowered to create any post but here the case is Ms Sasikala's appointment as general secretary itself is in question and how can she create posts and appoint someone,” Mr Maitreyan asked.
Mr Dinakaran, was inducted into the party on Wednesday morning and made deputy general secretary within hours, Mr Maitreyan said. “There can't be a greater mockery of inner-party democracy than this decision,” Mr Maitreyan
said.
