Rift widens in AIADMK as OPS skips CM’s review meet

Rift widens in AIADMK as OPS skips CM’s review meet

EPS Supporters Try To Make His Deputy ‘Fall In Line’

Julie.Mariappan@timesgroup.com

Chennai:30.09.2020

Political jousting in the AIADMK gathered pace as O Panneerselvam skipped a video conference Edappadi K Palaniswami called with top officials on Covid management on Tuesday, a day after they sparred over announcing a CM candidate for the 2021 assembly election.

As chief minister Palaniswami attended the conference at the secretariat, some of his supporters made another bid to force his deputy’s hand and persuade OPS to propose EPS’s name for CM. AIADMK deputy coordinator R Vaithilingam and deputy coordinator K P Munusamy called on OPS at his residence to persuade the deputy CM to “fall in line”. AIADMK organising secretary P H Manoj Pandian, among the few OPS supporters, was present too. Talks and mediation are likely to go on for the next few days, with OPS “upset” over the “persistent” demands by EPS loyalists at the executive committee meeting on Monday that the CM candidate be announced at once.

The BJP is also stirring the pot with multiple sources confirming that ministers S P Velumani and P Thangamani, close aides of the CM, had visited New Delhi on Friday last to meet “BJP leaders”. A close associate of OPS said the deputy CM too had long sought a meeting with home minister Amit Shah and is yet to be granted an appointment.

Vaithilingam told reporters his visit to OPS’s residence on Greenways Road here was “apolitical, personal. There is no confusion (over CM candidate).”

VYING FOR THE TOP POST: Some of the CM’s supporters made another bid to force his deputy’s hand and persuade O Panneerselvam to propose Edappadi K Palaniswami’s name for CM

OPS ‘upset’ over mins’ ‘conduct’

In the evening, minister S P Velumani and senior leader Natham R Viswanathan met the CM and minister R B Udayakumar visited the deputy CM. Panneerselvam has, meanwhile, dropped his earlier plan to leave for Theni, his native town.

A sticking point is OPS’s insistence that a 11-member steering committee be constituted for the party. OPS is also “upset” over the “conduct’ of a few ministers, including K A Sengottaiyan, Thangamani, Velumani, R Kamaraj, and some functionaries, who kept insisting that the CM candidate be announced at the Monday meeting. A minister had declared that he would not leave until the announcement was made. And some members had booed party veteran Panruti S Ramachandran when he pushed for “a collective decision taken in a democratic manner”. Ramachandran left the hall shortly thereafter. Palaniswami has opposed the constitution of a steering committee, saying he does not want to choose from a long list of aspirants.

At the Monday meeting, minister Udumalai S Radhakrishnan had shouted at another OPS supporter, J C D Prabhakar, when he rose to object to the way the EPS camp was pushing for announcement of the CM candidate. Panneerselvam was taken aback by the strong reaction from Thangamani, who said that pre-merger of the factions, the EPS camp had agreed to make him deputy CM for this term alone.