Bharat Ratna for Jayalalithaa, Annadurai and Periyar: AIADMK to Centre

Chennai: The ruling AIADMK has renewed its demand for conferring India's highest civilian honour: Bharat Ratna to its late supremo and former Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa. The party also sought the country's highest civilian honour for late Dravidian stalwarts E.V. Ramasamy 'Periyar' and C.N. Annadurai.

A meeting of the party's Executive Committee, the key decision-making body, urged the Centre to award Bharat Ratna posthumously to the three leaders for their struggles and achievements in public life.

While the party had made the demand for honouring Jayalalithaa with Bharat Ratna months after her demise in December 2016, the move to seek the honour for Periyar, known for his rationalist ideology, and former CM Annadurai, comes decades after their death. The latest demand comes days after DMK Rajya Sabha member Tiruchi N. Siva asked the Centre to posthumously confer Bharat Ratna to party chief M. Karunanidhi as a tribute to his outstanding and exemplary work for the people.

Thursday’s AIADMK meeting, which was presided by party’s presidium chairman E. Madhusudhanan, adopted a resolution, seeking Bharat Ratna for Periyar, Anna and Jayalalithaa. Party convenor and Deputy CM O. Panneerselvam and coconvenor and CM Edappadi K. Palaniswami among others attended the meeting.

The resolution heaped praise on Annadurai, DMK founder and the first non-Congress Chief Minister in Tamil Nadu after the country’s independence, and AIADMK said he showed for the first time that a regional party could storm to power in Independent India.

The meeting also passed resolutions, lauding the party’s Palaniswami-led government on many issues including the handling of the Cauvery issue.