Senior AIADMK leader and former Tamil Nadu assembly speaker P.H. Pandian passed away in Chennai on Saturday. The 74-year-old leader was undergoing cardiac treatments for the last few months.
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Pandian represented the erstwhile Cheranmahadevi assembly constituency between 1977 and 1989. A close confidante of AIADMK supremo and former Tamil Nadu chief minister M.G. Ramachandran, Pandian had served as the assembly speaker of Tamil Nadu from 1985 to 1989. Pandian had once famously declared that the speaker has "sky-high powers".
He also went on to become former chief minister J. Jayalalithaa's legal advisor between 1996 and 1999. Pandian also represented the Tirunelveli constituency in Lok Sabha in 1999.
Soon after her death in 2016, Pandian and his son Manoj Pandian, also a former MP and organising secretary of the AIADMK, had raised suspicions over Jayalalithaa's death, alleging that the death was not under 'natural circumstances'. He was also the first to revolt against the elevation of V.K. Sasikala as AIADMK's general secretary and pledge allegiance to O. Panneerselvam.
