Will Panneerselvam prove to be an exception to T.N.’s history of those who break away from principal parties?

The AIADMK’s former coordinator, O. Panneerselvam, who organised a rally in Tiruchi on Monday to mark the launch of his group, is facing the question of whether he will buck the trend of those who break away from principal parties and end up as failures.

The AIADMK’s former coordinator, O. Panneerselvam, who organised a rally in Tiruchi on Monday to mark the launch of his group, is facing the question of whether he will buck the trend of those who break away from principal parties and end up as failures.

Over the past 40-odd years, there have been a number of instances wherein leaders have left the DMK or the AIADMK at one stage or another, to form their own parties but have eventually gone back to their original parties or have merged their parties with some others, or joined hands with either of the principal parties and settled for roles of junior partners.

This can be seen in the examples of S.D. Somasundaram (SDS) and Su. Thirunavukkarasar, both of whom left the AIADMK in the  1980s and ‘90s,  and Vaiko, who exited from the DMK in 1993.  By a coincidence, SDS too had an event to launch his party, Namadhu Kazhagam, in Tiruchi in September 1984 with a 6 km long procession of lorries, tractor trailers, cars and vans, carrying banners.  But in the 1984 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, his party’s performance was a disaster. 

Speaking about the SDS episode in the present context, the OPS group’s deputy coordinator, J.C.D. Prabhakar, says Somasundaram, despite being no match to the party’s founder M.G. Ramachandran, both in terms of popular appeal or stature, had made allegations of corruption against the latter which did not go down well with the party cadre or people. But Mr Panneerselvam’s target of attack is the AIADMK’s general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami, “who is neither MGR nor Jayalalithaa,” the functionary points out, contending that the ex-coordinator has been “getting a raw deal” at the hands of the former and this is creating a “favourable opinion” for Mr. Panneerselvam. 

Coming down on Mr. Panneerselvam, however, State secretary of Amma Peravai in the AIADMK and former Revenue Minister, R.B. Udhayakumar, observes that the former coordinator, who claimed to have held a meet under the banner of the AIADMK, did not utter “a single word” critical of the DMK or the State government. “How would this be acceptable to the party cadre who have been raised on an anti-DMK plank?” Mr. Udhayakumar wonders. Besides, the disciplinary action against Mr. Panneerselvam was taken collectively by the party, and not unilaterally. “There was no unfairness in this decision,” the former Minister adds. 

An academic, who has been associated with several opinion polls conducted in the State, says that it is not yet clear whether Mr. Panneerselvam will chart out a path independent of the AIADMK or return to the AIADMK’s fold.