While police officers in Karnataka are fighting it out in the open over special favours given to jailed VK Sasikala serving her four year sentence in the Parappana Agrahara Prison, leaders of the rival AIADMK faction came out with disclosures more damaging to Sasikala and members of her Mannargudi clan.
In the on-going tussle between the rival factions of the AIADMK for Two leaves, the symbol of the undivided party, the group led by O Panneerselvam alleged on Thursday that the affidavits submitted by the Sasikala faction to the EC were fake.
EC had asked both the factions to submit affidavits from the party’s general body members about their stance on the election of Sasikala as the party general secretary and also their view on the symbol, Two leaves.
Manoj Pandian, the legal wing head of the Panneerselvam faction charged on Thursday that most of the affidavits submitted by the faction headed by Sasikala were fake and bogus. “The names and signatures on the affidavits do not match at all. This is not an isolated incident. There are hundreds of such affidavits bearing fake names and signatures. We have brought this fact to the attention of the ECI,” said Pandian, a former member of Rajya Sabha and son of P H Pandian, one of the close confidants of late J Jayalalithaa.
The Election Commission in its order had directed both the factions to submit affidavits from all members of the party to the Commission with a copy of each affidavit to the rival faction. Both the factions had claimed that they had submitted nearly four lakh affidavits. The ECI may have to physically inspect all these affidavits before coming to a conclusion on the fate of the AIADMK, a party having one crore active members.
The faction led by Sasikala is entangled in a series of legal battles with the Enforcement Dorectorate, Income Tax department and the Election Commission itself. Sasikala, sentenced in the disproportionate asset case, is an accused in two cases of violation of Foreign Exchange Regulation Act while her nephew and deputy general secretary TTV Dinakaran is an accused in another two cases of FERA violation. He is also involved in a criminal case of attempting to bribe Election Commission officials in connection with the Two leaves symbol and is out on bail after being in remand custody for 45 days in New Delhi’s Tihar Jail.