Tamil Nadu's former ruling party All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on Monday expelled 16 party functionaries who interacted with former party leader VK Sasikala. The party has also expelled its spokesperson V Pugazhendi for anti-party activities.
The AIADMK has also passed a resolution to take action against party workers who spoke to Sasikala.
In a statement, AIADMK termed VK Sasikala's telephonic conversations with party cadre as 'drama' adding that the party will never destroy itself for the desires of one family.
While V K Sasikala, the aide of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, is testing the ground to recapture control of the AIADMK, the party’s co-coordinator and former Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami has ruled out any such possibility.
After Jayalalithaa’s death in December 2016, her live-in aide of nearly three decades – except for two brief expulsions from the household – was “appointed” interim general secretary of the AIADMK. In February 2017, Sasikala was even elected the AIADMK Legislature Party leader and was set to become Chief Minister but a Supreme Court verdict convicting her in a corruption case (in which Jayalalithaa was the prime accused) put paid to her plans.
Sasikala, who returned from a four year stay in jail earlier this year, had around the last Assembly election time announced that she would “step away” from politics.
In one such leaked audio tape, she claimed that she had made Palaniswami the Chief Minister before being jailed as she wanted to ensure that Jayalalithaa’s dream of the AIADMK remaining in power for 100 years remained undisturbed.
However, Palaniswami said, "Sasikala is out of the AIADMK and she and her relatives don't have any place in the party. She has openly declared before the elections that she has moved away from politics. The voice clippings were her talk with the AMMK cadre but some elements are deliberately creating confusion and spreading wrong information."
