At a time when the ruling DMK has been fighting against NEET exams, and the state BJP leader K. Annamalai has been on a padayatra to appease people, AIADMK leader Edappadi K. Palaniswami took the entire state by surprise. The AIADMK’s conference at Madurai was a massive show of strength, with over three lakh people from across the state attending the event. Palaniswami used the opportunity to tell the people that he is the sole uncontested leader of the opposition AIADMK and the party stands firmly behind him.
“Everyone said we are nowhere present in the south. People said the AIADMK has lost its strength after Amma and we are split into splinter groups. But did you see the overwhelming response? We are still the single largest party in the state,” said former minister and AIADMK spokesperson D. Jayakumar.
Though there have been public rallies and massive meetings organised in the past years, it was for the first time in the last two decades that the AIADMK saw such a huge turnout. There were over 3.5 lakh people at the conference venue, according to AIADMK senior leaders. A special train was organised by senior leaders like S.P. Velumani, P. Thangamani and others to bring partymen from different parts of the state. Former minister and AIADMK’s Madurai strongman R.B. Udhayakumar, who was one of the main organisers of the conference, had alone mobilised 70,000 people from in and around Madurai for the conference. At least 6,000 to 7,000 people were brought in from each district in Tamil Nadu for the conference by the respective district secretaries. “We thought there will be a floating crowd and the party men will go off after lunch. But everyone stayed till the end,” said a party senior.
The Madurai conference sent out a message from the AIADMK that the party is still strong in the south like it used to be under MGR and Jayalalithaa. In the last two elections, the party saw a major dent in its vote share in the southern districts, due to the splinter group led by T. T. V. Dhinakaran.
After a two-year lull, since the 2021 elections, Palaniswami is back in the saddle, sending a strong message to his opponents in the ruling DMK and the leaders of his own national ally BJP, that the AIADMK is the single largest party in the state with a massive vote share. “Whoever comes, he cannot erase the popularity and the space of the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu,” Palaniswami said while addressing the cadres at the Madurai conference.
But more than the DMK, the message was to the BJP. In fact, a few weeks back, when Tamil Nadu BJP president Annamalai launched his padayatra from Rameswaram, Palaniswami made it a point not to take part in the event despite the presence of Home Minister Amit Shah. He sent his party representative and made it a point to tell the BJP that his party is the largest in the state. Though there have been simmering tensions in the alliance between the AIADMK and the BJP, since 2019, Palaniswami has been wanting to tell the BJP that he is the sole, uncontested leader of the party and there is no space for ousted leaders like O. Panneerselvam or Dhinakaran or V.K. Sasikala.
Since the passing away of Jayalalithaa, the rebellion of Panneerselvam and the incarceration of V.K. Sasikala, Palaniswami grabbed the opportunity presented to him and climbed up the ladder of power with his political acumen and instinct. Even when the entire state wrote him off as a man who lacks administrative skills he managed to run the show for more than four years.
