Chaos, crisis and confusion haunt the ruling AIADMK as well as the Opposition DMK and its allies, if the goings on in the various camps are any indication. While the AIADMK is disintegrating faster than what was expected, a three-way war has erupted in the DMK-Congress combine with Khusboo, the former glamour girl of Tamil films as the focus. The interesting news is that the DMK family is working overtime to bring M Alagiri, the Madurai based son of M Karunanidhi back to the party.
Allies of the DMK like VCK and the lefts are suspicious of the intentions of the Dravidian major following the recent confabulations between MK Stalin and K Chandrasekhar Rao, Chief Minister of Telangana who is also the boss of TRS, the ruling party of that State. The lefts and the VCK are yet to swallow the version of Stalin about the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Gopalapuram to call on the DMK patriarch Karunanidhi as a courtesy call.
“The situations in the AIADMK and DMK camps could be summed up as chaos and confusion,” said Tiruppati Narayanan, spokesperson of the BJP. “A lack of trust between the alliance partners is visible all over,” said Narayanan.
N Kalyanasundaram, veteran scribe and chronicler of Tamil Nadu politics is of the view that the AIADMK s getting fragmented because of ego clashes, turf war and absence of a charismatic leader like MGR or Jayalalithaa. “ As on date we have three factions of the AIADMK. The one led by Edappadi Palaniswamy and O Panneerselvam, the AMMK led by V K Sasikala and her nephew TTV Dhinakaran and another faction led by TV Dhivakaran, the Mannargudi based brother of Sasikala. There is no guarantee that the party would not split further before the 2019 lok Sabha election,” said Kalyanasundaram.
Two recent incidents have almost sealed the fate of AIADMK in Tamil Nadu. Thursday’s clash between the volunteers of AIADMK and the followers of Dhinakaran at Coimbatore which left many injured and the legal notice served by Sasikala to her brother Dhivakaran warning him of sing her name . Dhivakaran retaliated by disowning his sister publicly at Mannargudi.
The DMK cadre is thoroughly disappointed with Stalin becase of his failure in bringing down the AIADMK government which is surviving on a wafer-thin majority. “There is an effort by the members of the Karunandhi clan to bring back Alagiri, who has been expelled from the DMK at the instance of Stalin. The DMK leadership has understood that Stalin was interested in promoting his son Udayanidhi in the party. It is interesting to note that the DMK has noot won any election since the sidelining of Alagiri,” said MSR Nithyanand, political commentator.
The war of words between TNCC president Thirunavakarassar and party’s national spokesperson Khushboo has instigated the DMK to come to the help of the former actress who was party chief Karunanidhi’s favourite. The TNCC president in a statement the other day reminded Khushboo that she was chased out of the DMK by the party cadre. TKS Elangovan, the DMK spokesman said on Thursday that Thrunavakarassar’s allegation was not correct. But Khushboo’s house in Chennai was vandalised by supporters of Stalin in February 2013 for her comments about their leader in a Tamil periodical and subsequently she left the DMK in 2014.
Hence it is a AIADMK vs AMMK vs Dhivakaran in the ruling camp while it is DMK vs Congress vs Khushboo and VCK vs DMK in the Opposition.