Politics By Resignation Begins In TN, 3 AIADMK MLAs Switch Over To TVK

Chennai: Already facing rebellion within its ranks, the AIADMK suffered a further jolt on Monday when three of its newly-elected legislators resigned their Assembly membership and switched loyalties to the ruling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagram, prompting the opposition parties to accuse Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay of indulging in “horse trading”.

Shortly after the three legislators Maragatham Kumaravel, S Jayakumar and P Sathyabhama submitted their resignations to him, Speaker J C D Prabhakar announced they were in order and accepted them. The three then met the PWD Minister and TVK senior leader Aadhav Arjuna at his official chambers and presented him shawls. They later joined the TVK.

All three were part of the rebel AIADMK camp led by a troika of regional strongmen including former Minister S P Velumani and had voted in favour of trust vote moved by Vijay recently. Meanwhile, five other rebel legislators, met the Speaker and informed him they were going back to the official AIADMK camp led by party general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami.

Interestingly Vijay had shied away from meeting Palaniswami but had met the Velumani camp just a day before the trust vote in the Assembly. Both AIADMK groups had presented petitions to the Speaker against each other. The Palaniswami camp had sought the disqualification of the rebel MLAs for defying the party whip during the trust vote.

The talk in political circles is the legislators, who resigned, could be fielded in the by-elections on a TVK ticket. The ruling party is 11 short of the majority mark in the 234-member House and its government is surviving on the outside support of four legislators of the CPI and CPI-M, besides giving ministerial berths to the VCK and IUML (which have two members each) and the Congress (five legislators).

It had also won over support from the lone AMMK legislator, who had contested as part of the NDA front.

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DMK president M K Stalin accused the TVK government of indulging in “horse trading at horse speed”. Palaniswami wondered how an actor, who had branded himself as a “pure force” was allowing resignation to happen on the ground floor and allowing them to join the TVK on the first floor of the Assembly-cum-Secretariat complex.

Critics also pointed out the resignations had come at a time when the Vijay government is facing strong criticism for a series of crimes in Tamil Nadu over the past 15 days in which women and children have been victims. In Coimbatore, a schoolgirl was abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered by two men recently. There have been other crimes against women and children in different parts of the State. In fact, just on Monday morning, Leader of Opposition Udhayanidhi Stalin had wondered if this was Tamil Nadu or Uttar Pradesh.