Saidai Duraisamy urges AIADMK to follow M.G.R. and Jayalalithaa’s approach of political reconciliation

Saidai Duraisamy urges AIADMK to follow M.G.R. and Jayalalithaa’s approach of political reconciliation

Former AIADMK legislator Saidai S. Duraisamy on Tuesday (April 8, 2025) called upon the party leadership to adopt the approach of the party founder M.G. Ramachandran and former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa in political reconciliation. 

Mr. Duraisamy, who was the party’s first Chennai Mayor (2016-21), told journalists that both M.G.R. and Jayalalithaa had taken under their fold those leaders who were once extremely critical of them. While the former admitted V.R. Nedunchezhian, who was responsible for his ouster from the DMK in 1972, and S.D. Somasundaram into the AIADMK, the latter took back her bitter adversaries K. Kalimuthu and R.M. Veerappan. Their examples should be followed “in the interests of the party and the organisation’s growth,” he emphasised, wondering what the problem was for the present leadership to follow suit.  

Renewing his call for the revival of ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the 73-year-old veteran, who called himself the “earliest fighter” of the Dravidian major, argued that only the AIADMK’s alliance with the national party would ensure a “level-playing field” during the 2026 Assembly poll as otherwise, the “limitless money power” of the ruling party in the State, combined with a formidable alliance, would make the AIADMK “disappear from the political scene.”  

If the party does not win the poll, no one would be able to “rescue the Dravidian major,” Mr. Duraisamy observed.

The former legislator, who represented Saidapet during 1985-88, urged the leadership to give prominence to M.G.R. as such a course, he pointed out, would yield “huge political dividends.”

He unsuccessfully contested from Saidapet in 1989, 1996, and 2021 and Kolathur in 2011.