Will protect AIADMK the way MGR, Jaya did: Sasikala

Amidst a growing sentiment for her reinduction into the AIADMK, expelled leader V K Sasikala on Monday renewed her call for unity and asserted that she will fulfil the aspirations of the cadre and protect the party the way their founder MG Ramachandran (MGR) and successor J Jayalalithaa did.

While Sasikala’s call for unity and her assurance that she will lead the party the way its veterans did is not new, it comes amidst several churns in the AIADMK and the 50-year-old party is at one of its weakest.

“Let us preserve the party in the footsteps of Puratchi Thalaivar (MGR) and Puratchi Thalaivi (Jayalalithaa), overcoming all trials and tribulations. We should not be worried,” read a statement from Sasikala. The statement was released on Monday after Sasikala concluded her two-day pilgrimage cum political tour of two southern districts and is now back in the capacity city.

Sasikala said that even though she went to visit temples in these districts, several people from the young and the old wanted her to protect the AIADMK through her leadership. She said that she assured them that she would fulfil their desire and strive to restore the regime which worked for the people. She had received a grand welcome in public places. Until the AIADMK’s loss in the local body polls, Sasikala had restricted herself to issuing statements on all political developments and addressed herself as the party’s general secretary (AIADMK’s top most post).

Sasikala’s renewed pitch comes just two days after the AIADMK expelled O Raja (party coordinator O Panneerselvam’s brother and the chief of the Theni District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union (Aavin) for meeting Sasikala on Friday at her hotel in Tiruchendur in Thoothukudi district. Panneerselvam himself signed the order along with joint coordinator Edappadi Palaniswami. Raja shot back saying that he didn’t join the party during the dual leadership and he has been a cadre since the time of MGR and only Sasikala should lead the party.

Given how the dual leadership has lost four elections consecutively since the 2019 parliamentary elections, political experts say that the prevailing belief is for all leaders of the AIADMK to unite. Even until 2021 assembly elections, most partymen didn’t want Sasikala back and thought that the dual leadership despite their ego tussles was stable. In the urban local body polls, the ruling DMK swept across the state leaving the AIADMK with only a 25% vote share. “After successive losses, the party feels that the infighting and such divisions of the AIADMK is wrecking the party,” said Durai Karunanidhi, political commentator and a long-time chronicler of Sasikala.

Even until last week, Panneerselvam and Palaniswami had not even been speaking to each other. Karunanidhi makes a comparison between the present scenario to the time after MGR’s death in December 1987 when the party split into two factions between Jayalalithaa and MGR’s wife V N Janaki and faced a rout in the 1989 assembly elections to the DMK. After Janaki conceded saying that the party is in favour of Jayalalithaa whom MGR had groomed, the factions merged. In 1991, the Jayalalithaa-led party won a landslide victory against the DMK. “So the AIADMK cadre feel like there is no future unless there is a merger. Most of them are joining the DMK. In Sivakasi, 10 out of the 11 AIADMK councillors joined the DMK. The DMK is not just strong on its own but with a coalition of 12 allies. Because the AIADMK is in an alliance with the BJP, there is no room for Congress, Left parties and regional parties to join the party,” says Karunanidhi. “Sasikala is using such sentiment to make a comeback.”

There are two sections now in the divided house of the AIADMK- one which wants Sasikala and her nephew TTV Dhinakaran ((who leads the breakaway faction of the AIADMK- Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK)) back so that the former’s Thevar caste-based support which has largely been going to AMMK can be consolidated. Another section, those supporting Palaniswami under whom a counter to the Thevars was built by the Gounder community want status quo of the dual leadership.

While Palaniswami–the numero uno of the party– has been stuck to his guns to stone walling Sasikala’s reinduction since her release from prison in January 2021, Panneerselvam’s action expelling his brother has left confusion prevailing in the party as he has been in favour of her return. On March 2, Panneerselvam held a meeting at his Theni residence which was viewed as bringing Sasikala’s supporters together. On the same night AIADMK’s Theni district secretary Syed Khan handed over their unit’s resolution to Panneerselvam demanding that everyone who left after the death of Jayalalithaa (in December 2016) including Sasikala and her nephew Dhinakaran to be brought back.