Former chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on Saturday filed his nomination papers to contest the elections for the post of AIADMK General Secretary, even as the camp led by expelled leader O Panneerselvam moved the Madras High Court seeking a stay on conduct of the polls.
The case filed by P H Manoj Pandian, a close aide of OPS and AIADMK MLA, will be taken up for urgent hearing on Sunday morning by justice K Kumaresh Babu. The petition opens yet another legal battle between the two sides as they have been knocking at the doors of judiciary since June 2022 after the faction led by Palaniswami decided to abolish the dual leadership arrangement and revert to singular leadership.
Palaniswami, flanked by senior party leaders, filed his nomination papers to Election Commissioners, Natham R Viswanathan and Pollachi V Jayaraman, on Saturday morning. His nomination was proposed and seconded by 20 district secretaries, while 37 others filed nominations in the name of Palaniswami.
If no one else file nomination, Palaniswami will be elected unopposed as General Secretary of the AIADMK in what is seen as a move to further consolidate his hold in the party. The party moved to conduct the GS elections after the Supreme Court had on February 23 validated the July 11 General Council meeting that appointed Palaniswami as the interim GS and expelled OPS from the party.
The election schedule was announced on Friday night, taking the OPS camp by surprise. An hour after Palaniswami filed his nomination papers, OPS addressed a press conference accusing his former colleague of behaving like a “dictator.”
"The election to the top post will be held only after completion of certain processes. There is no due process, and they want to hold the election for the general secretary post like a pickpocket doing away (with one's purse)..is this acceptable," Panneerselvam asked.
OPS camp says the election is invalid as the Election Commission of India (ECI) is yet to ratify the amendments to byelaws of the party approved by the General Council. Unless the EC accepts the amendments, they said, the AIADMK cannot hold elections to the post of general secretary.
The AIADMK’s internal problems which began after Jayalalithaa’s death in 2016 are yet to be solved. While OPS rebelled against V K Sasikala in 2017, the latter anointed Palaniswami as the Chief Minister before she went to Bengaluru to serve her prison term in the disproportionate assets (DA) case.
However, after she went to jail, OPS and EPS patched up and ran the AIADMK as coordinator and joint coordinator for about five years when Palaniswami struck unannounced seeking unitary leadership in the party.