It was a day of disappointment for the AIADMK cadres who had expected the Panneerselvam and the Palanisami teams to hold talks and take the merger forward. But what they saw was again the press conferences by both the factions just to blame each other for not turning up for the meeting.
Seven days after T.T.V. Dhinakaran agreed to step aside, the AIADMK merger still seems to be a hard task. The OPS faction has laid down two major demands—V.K. Sasikala and her family should completely exit the party and the state government should write to Centre requesting a CBI probe into the death of former chief minister J.Jayalalithaa.
“They cannot come to the talks with any pre-conditions,” said K.P. Munusamy after holding an hour-long talks with OPS and his supporters in his Venus Colony residence in Chennai.
R. Vaithiyalingam, Rajya Sabha MP, who is heading a committee formed by Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palanisami, said, “We had sent messages to their (leaders in the OPS faction) mobile phones. But they did not turn up.”
Apparently, as an indication to the ouster of Sasikala and her family, all the banners and posters of the party chief in front of the AIADMK head quarters at Lloyds Road in Chennai were removed earlier in the day.
But truce is something that both the teams cannot imagine anytime soon. It seems the merger is a long drawn out process which might witness several ups and downs over the next few weeks.
While the OPS camp demands for all the lucrative portfolios in both the party and the government, the Palanisami camp, which holds sway in the western belt—known as the Kongu belt in Tamil Nadu—wants to stay powerful. But the urgency of coming together, sources say, was the upcoming local body polls.
The Madras High Court had instructed the state government to hold the local body polls before July this year. It has been almost nine months since the term of the local bodies came to an end. The election which was scheduled for November was postponed after the DMK went to the court. Unless the 'two leaves' symbol is retrieved, both the warring factions cannot imagine a victory.
The OPS camp is demanding both the chief minister and the party general secretary post for Panneerselvam. However, Palanisami is not ready to give up the CM post. Sources say he is not willing to compromise on this from day one when the merger talks began. Palanisami, who recently went to New Delhi for the Niti Ayog meeting and had a brief discussion with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is firm on continuing as the chief minister.
The Palanisamy team has also not made its stand clear over demanding a CBI probe into Jayalalithaa's death and ousting Sasikala's family from the party.
“It is pending in the Election Commission. The commission will come out with its decision as to if Sasikala can continue as the general secretary of the party,” says Vaithiyalingam. However, the OPS camp doesn’t seem to compromise on these two demands.
With these manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres, the AIADMK seems to have lost its 'two leaves' forever.
State Governor in-charge Ch Vidyasagar Rao has not yet commented or asked for any report from the government on the prolonging political instability which has put the state administration at stake. While Union minister Venkaiah Naidu repeatedly claims that the BJP is not in anyway involved in this and only wants political stability, his party and its leadership at the Centre will never relish any regional satraps growing in any state.
In fact, all these years, Jayalalithaa and her arch-rival M. Karunanidhi were hard nuts to crack and the BJP could not manage to score more than 2.5 per cent votes in the state. With a rainbow alliance in 2014, it managed to get only 19 per cent votes, which is much less than the single share of the two Dravidian parties.
On the other side, the DMK has already started bringing all the opposition parties together and fight against the unstable government. The one-day hartal called by the DMK and the other parties on Tuesday has received support from all sides.
