Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa showed the door to three Ministers and inducted as many in her Cabinet on Monday. Jayalalithaa, who is also the general secretary of the AIADMK, also ousted three district secretaries of the party. The actions are being seen as the fall out of the recently concluded lok Sabha elections and a by-election in the State.
Monday morning saw the parliamentary party of the AIADMK electing Dr Thampi Durai, former Union Minister as leader of the parliamentary party in the lok Sabha and Mythreeyan as leader of the party in Rajya Sabha.
Ministers S Damodaran, KT Patchamal and DV Ramana were dropped from the Council of Ministers while SS Krishnamurthy, SP Velmani and S Gokul Indira were inducted as new Ministers. This is the tenth reshuffle of the Jayalalithaa Government, which assumed office in May 2011. None of the Ministers who were dropped or those who were inducted were available for comments as in the AIADMK only the party supremo is authorised to speak to the media.
While no reasons have been given for dropping the Ministers and inducting new ministers, this is seen as a follow up to the results of the lok sabha election in which the AIADMK won 37 out of the 39 seats at stake from the State. The ousted Ministers were in charge of the constituencies where the AIADMK did not win. The party lost Kanyakumari, Dharmapuri and the lone seat from Puducherry.
Gokul Indira was in-charge of the Chennai Central lok Sabha constituency from where AIADMK candidate Vijayakumar won defeating Dayanidhi Maran of the DMK. The Chennai Central constituency has been described as a citadel of the DMK and this is the first time the AIADMK wrested the seat. Indira had told in the run-up to the election that the AIADMK would dethrone the DMK this time.
Since she was sworn-in as Chief Minister for the fourth time in 2011, Jayalalithaa has been exhorting the party cadre as well as office bearers to win all the 40 seats (39 from Tamil Nadu and the lone seat from the union territory of Puducherry) in the 2014 lok Sabha election. In addition to the 37 seats won by the AIADMK, the party also wrested the Alanur Assembly constituency from the DMDK in the by-election held along with the lok Sabha election. The by election was necessitated because of the resignation of Panrutti Ramachandran who represented the constituency as a DMDK member. He quit from the DMDK and joined the AIADMK.