This was addressed when an EPS-led delegation flew to Delhi last month to meet BJP party president J P Nadda and Union home minister Amit Shah, where Annamalai was also present. In the past few weeks his relationship with EPS has been deteriorating. “But, we will not interfere in their internal matters.”Įarlier this year, reports emerged about Tamil Nadu BJP president K Annamalai telling his party in a closed door meeting that his personal belief is to breakaway from the AIADMK. “We have always wanted the AIADMK to be united so that our alliance is stronger to defeat the DMK,” said a BJP leader in Tamil Nadu. The BJP did not succeed in convincing EPS to bring back Sasikala into the party for the 2021 assembly elections, though OPS was open to the idea. “The BJP knows OPS’s strength in the southern districts, so they will be willing to support us. But this is the situation now, so we are trying to bring together like-minded cadre and leaders,” said a supporter of OPS who was also ousted. “Everybody knows that the way OPS was sent out of the party was wrong. Since the courts and the Election Commission of India (ECI) have held EPS’s elevation as general secretary of the AIADMK valid, OPS has been cornered. With the trio belonging to the same Thevar caste joining forces, voting patterns from previous elections show that the Thevar vote bank would go to them, weakening the AIADMK-led NDA alliance’s prospects in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP has been keen on uniting various factions of the AIADMK so that the votes do not split with TTV’s 5-year-old party, Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK). With O Panneerselvam (OPS) and TTV Dhinakaran getting closer, driven by their ouster from the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, and VK Sasikala set to meet OPS soon, this emerging faction is likely to further strain the ties between AIADMK general secretary Edappadi Palaniswami (EPS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party in Tamil Nadu, experts say. The Palaniswami-Panneerselvam faction had at the same time granted the ‘electric pole’ symbol.Chennai: On May 8, O Panneerselvam met TTV Dhinakaran at his residence in Chennai, held a joint press conference, joined hands and announced their decision to work together. In March 2017, the Election Commission had allotted the ‘hat’ symbol to the Sasikala-Dhinakaran group after it froze the use of the ‘two leaves’ symbol to which the group led by Palaniswami and Panneerselvam had also staked a claim. In 2017, a charge-sheet was filed by the Delhi Police’s crime branch claiming that the alleged middleman, Sukesh Chandrasekar, had conspired with Dhinakaran and others to bribe poll panel officials to get the two leaves symbol for Sasikala-led AIADMK faction.Ī bench comprising justices G S Sistani and Sangita Dhingra Sehgal upheld the EC’s decision of November 23, 2017, saying none of the grounds of challenge taken by Dhinakaran and Sasikala was sufficient to set aside the poll panel’s order.Īfter the order was pronounced, senior advocate Abhishek M Singhvi, appearing for Dhinakaran and Sasikala, urged the bench to direct the EC not to allot the party’s pressure cooker symbol to anyone during the subsequent 15 days so that they have time to move the Supreme Court and seek appropriate relief from there. On February 28, the Delhi High Court dismissed the pleas of Dhinakaran and Sasikala which challenged the Election Commission’s order to grant the AIADMK name and two leaves symbol to the faction led by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister E Palaniswami.
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