TTV Dhinakaran war pushes Edappadi K Palanisamy to O Panneerselvam truce
The date June 14 looks ominous for the embattled CM as the State Assembly meets that day even as TTV continues to count his growing brood.
Chennai: T.T.V. Dhinakaran improved his tally of supporters among the ruling AIADMK legislators to 32 by Wednesday sunset, but the man is yet far from the light of dawn. In fact, his 'war' on Edappadi K. Palanisami is pushing the Chief Minister to speed up the merger with the rival O. Panneerselvam group if only to save the government, according to informed sources.
The date — June 14 — looks ominous for the embattled CM as the State Assembly meets that day even as TTV continues to count his growing brood.
Edappadi must sail through the 24-day session without the embarrassment of any of the demands of a department getting shot down, should the opposition DMK press for 'division voting' and the TTV faction chooses to stay away.
“There is no legal necessity for the ministry to resign if such a thing happens, but there will be moral pressure to do so. The opposition benches will demand that. One can only hope such an unprecedented crisis does not strike the government and put us all in a tight spot", said an old-timer at the Assembly secretariat.
“We are targeting three Ministers — D. Jayakumar (fisheries), P. Thangamani (electricity, prohibition and excise) and S.P. Velumani (municipal administration and rural development) as they have been openly working against our deputy general secretary. Our numbers will increase by the day”, said a legislator in the TTV camp. Perhaps sensing such trouble, the fisheries demand has been slotted on July 11, almost 3 weeks after the session starts, in the hope that things would be sorted out by then - one way or the other. The ‘one way’ propounded by the ‘merger managers’ from the OPS camp is that EPS must implead in their petition before EC for setting aside the election of Sasikala general secretary.
“We had clear indications from them (EPS) accepting this, but this TTV war has slowed down things a bit. We are expecting that they will implead in the next couple of days and once that is done, it’s just a matter of time before the EC declares Sasikala’s election as void, which in turn would render all the decisions made by her, including the appointment of TTV as deputy general secretary invalid”, said a senior member of the OPS think-tank.
“Having taken a stand against the continuance of the Sasikala family at the helm, the best and honest option for EPS now is to quickly implead in the OPS petition before the EC. This will also arrest the traffic of MLAs to TTV bungalow.”, said the OPS camper.
