O Panneerselvam and Edappadi K Palaniswami were on Monday elected unopposed as coordinator and joint coordinator, respectively, of the AIADMK, which has kick-started its first organisational elections since the death of party supremo J Jayalalithaa in 2016.
Panneerselvam and Palaniswami had filed their nomination papers on December 3, days after the party’s executive council approved an amendment to allow the election of coordinator and joint coordinator by primary members of the AIADMK through a single-vote system.
The duo was appointed to the coordinator and joint coordinator posts by the party's general council in 2017, which ousted VK Sasikala as the party’s interim general secretary. The election was aimed at keeping Sasikala, who has vowed to take over the AIADMK, at bay.
C Ponnaiyan and Pollachi V Jayaraman, the election commissioners of the party, said in a statement on Monday that several party leaders, including district secretaries and lawmakers, had filed nominations in favour of OPS and EPS. The nominations were taken up for scrutiny on Sunday.
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“There was only one nomination filed for the posts of coordinator and joint coordinator by O Panneerselvam and Edappadi K Palaniswami. Since the nomination is accepted under rule 20 (A), Section 2, Panneerselvam and Palaniswami are declared elected unopposed as coordinator and joint coordinator, respectively,” Ponnaiyan and Jayaraman said in a statement.
The internal polls have further legitimised the “dual leadership” structure, in a critical setback to Sasikala’s efforts to take over the AIADMK leadership. According to the AIADMK, Sasikala is not even a primary member of the party as she failed to renew her membership in 2017 after the by-laws were amended to accommodate Panneerselvam as coordinator and Palaniswami as joint coordinator.
This is the first time that the AIADMK is conducting organisational polls since Jayalalithaa’s death in 2016, when the general council had used its powers to appoint Sasikala as the interim general secretary. However, the council nullified Sasikala’s appointment a year later and introduced the posts of coordinator and joint coordinator by appointing Jayalalithaa as the “permanent general secretary.”
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