Chennai: Much before the match toss, Kamal Haasan has lost a wicket in his MNM. On Monday, citing escalating internal politics, the beauty with health entrepreneur, CK Kumaravel, CEO and co-founder of Naturals Salons quit the Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) launched by the actor in February last year.
While praising the actor-politician for his sound vision for Tamil Nadu, Kumaravel in a letter to party chief Kamal Haasan, has apparently expressed his anguish over what he termed as “internal politics” that he felt had led to multiple issues, notably huge delay in declaration of candidates.
However, the party in a release, indicated that it was upset over Kumaravel unilaterally declaring himself in his Facebook page as the candidate from Cuddalore constituency even before the selection process was completed.
“The reason for quitting is internal politics,” he has stated alluding to the entry of Dr Mahendran into the party. Doctor and vanilla farmer Mahendran was appointed MNM’s Vice President in November last year. “With Dr Mahendran coming into the picture, the internal party politics increased multifold,” he has said bluntly.
A resolution to appoint Mahendran as VP had been passed by the party’s Governing Body and Executive Committee on October 8, 2018.
“Kamal has a good vision, he puts in a lot of effort. But the team around him is detrimental to him, the party and to his vision,” Kumarevel has observed.
Elaborating, he said, “A start-up party like ours should be a lot more agile. But we are the last to announce candidates (to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls). We should have made the announcement a month ago and started groundwork by now. This was the advantage that (former Chief Minister) J Jayalalithaa had over (former Chief Minister) M Karunanidhi. She would announce her candidates well in advance. The bigger parties have announced their lists. This shows where the
priorities lie. Things are going from bad to worse. Someone needs to bell the cat. So I said okay, let me sacrifice myself.”
On Monday, the party issued a statement setting the date for the Lok Sabha candidates announcement on March 20.
Asked if he had voiced his concerns to the party leadership, the businessman said that he had done so from time to time. “I expressed my concerns, my viewpoints and my suggestions from time to time in the WhatsApp group that we have. But it was not even acknowledged. Then I thought to myself that our party is no exception (to internal politics).”
Kumaravel recalled that he joined the party with much enthusiasm and energy, inspired by Kamal Haasan’s vision for Tamil Nadu. “A lot of people told me that I was being
foolish. But I told myself that if I don’t go and support him (Kamal Haasan) now, then I will have no locus standi to speak later,” he says.
Accepting Kumaravel’s resignation on the grounds that he had not acted in keeping with the ‘democratic tenets’ of the party, the statement said, “In between the week long process of Parliamentary candidate interviews, Mr Kumaravel’s Facebook page had updates on him declaring that he is already selected as the Candidate for the Cuddalore constituency when the selection process was not even completed.”
“Makkal Needhi Maiam has a strict zero tolerance policy on applicants violating party principles for which MNM gives utmost importance. This is more so on applicants not communicating pending decisions to any media/social media ahead of the party leadership’s formal statement on the same especially when there were more than a few hundred applicants waiting to be interviewed in a democratic manner,” it said, pointing out that ‘he had not even sat down for his interview with the panel’ when he allegedly posted the status updates on social media.
