Panneerselvam walks out of GC meeting as AIADMK leaders throw weight behind Palaniswami

The AIADMK General Council meeting here on Thursday rejected all the 23 resolutions proposed by Panneerselvam

Amid a walkout by O Panneerselvam, the Edappadi K Palaniswami faction on Thursday stopped short of declaring the latter as the general secretary of the AIADMK at the much-awaited General Council meeting whose members rejected all 23 resolutions that were earlier approved by the party leadership.

As an early morning order from the Madras High Court restrained the powerful General Council from moving a resolution on the “unitary leadership” based on a plea by Panneerselvam, the party’s newly-elected Presidium Chairman Tamilmagan Hussain declared that the next GC will be convened on July 11.

High drama prevailed at the general council meeting which lasted for a mere 38 minutes as majority of the leaders on the dais refused to acknowledge Panneerselvam’s presence. In fact, the GC members raised slogans against him – OPS was calm and composed through the meeting before staging a walkout.

Within minutes of the meeting convening, former Law Minister C V Shanmugham declared that the General Council was “rejecting all the resolutions” approved beforehand.

Also read | Nobody can pressure me to resign: Panneerselvam tells Palaniswami

Later, he read out the letter signed by 2,190 GC members which said the “directionless dual leadership” has caused confusion within the party and is ineffective in taking on the ruling DMK. “The members want the GC to discuss the unitary leadership and announce the date for next meeting immediately,” Shanmugam said, reading out the letter.

Armed with the signatures from 2,190 of the 2,600-odd GC members submitted by the EPS faction, Hussain said the next GC to be held on July 11 at the insistence of “majority of its members” will elect the unitary leadership. Even as Hussain made the announcement, the OPS camp staged a walkout by calling the decisions of the meeting “illegal.”

K P Munusamy, one of the first to support OPS when he rebelled against Sasikala in 2017 and now with the rival camp, said Palaniswami will be elected as the general secretary of the AIADMK on July 11. However, the rival camp led by OPS said the move will take the party on the “path to destruction.”

With majority support, EPS is likely to be elected as general secretary of the AIADMK on July 11.

The EPS faction had planned to move a “separate resolution” seeking to revert to unitary leadership by abolishing the current “dual leadership” along with 23 other resolutions approved by the party. However, the OPS faction, in a last-ditch effort, moved the Madras High Court on Wednesday night against a single judge order which refused to impose any restriction.

After hearing the case in the wee hours, a division bench of Justices M Duraiswamy and Sunder Mohan restrained the GC from passing any resolution that will amend the bylaws in support of a unitary leadership.

OPS, who stood for Jayalalithaa twice when she had to resign as chief minister due to corruption cases, lost his clout within the party after the 2017 Marina Rebellion against Sasikala even as EPS consolidated his position within the party by completing his tenure and leading the AIADMK to the best-ever performance in a losing election.

For OPS, this is a crucial battle as ceding the only “powerful” position he holds in the party to EPS, who has consolidated his position in the AIADMK, would only mean that he would be pushed to political oblivion.

The EPS faction believes his being at the top will help the party “counter” the ruling DMK in an “efficient way” and also challenge the BJP which is projecting itself as the principal Opposition party. It was EPS’ aides who broached the “unitary leadership” at a meeting on June 14 which was convened to discuss the general council meeting.

EPS, hand-picked by Sasikala as Chief Minister in 2017 before she went to serve her four-year term in a disproportionate assets (DA) case, had stonewalled BJP's proposal to induct Sasikala into the party before the 2021 assembly polls, maintaining that the “core vote bank” of the AIADMK stays with the party and not the splinter group.