Palaniswami warns Annamalai to 'be careful while talking about AIADMK'

Breaking his silence on K Annamalai’s statement that the AIADMK will “cease to exist” after the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, former Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami has warned the Tamil Nadu BJP chief to be “careful” while talking about his party, which he said, was floated by the legendary M G Ramachandran to fight for the oppressed.

Addressing a public meeting in his home turf of Salem on Friday night, Palaniswami launched a frontal attack on Annamalai and sought to remind him that it was the AIADMK that first introduced the BJP’s Lotus symbol in Tamil Nadu in 1998 when “nobody even knew which party the symbol belonged to.”

Palaniswami was responding to Annamalai’s interview with popular Tamil news channel Puthiya Thalaimurai, in which he had said that the AIADMK would “vanish” after the 2024 polls and the state doesn’t need a party just to “oppose the DMK.” On Saturday, Annamalai, while campaigning for AIADMK rebel T T V Dhinakaran, accused Palaniswami of “ignoring” partymen and giving tickets to “relatives and family members” for the Lok Sabha elections.

“Annamalai says he will destroy the AIADMK in 2024. AIADMK was floated by God (MGR) and it has faced so many people who have spoken like you in the past. Don’t speak out of arrogance. Tamil Nadu wouldn’t have developed if there was no AIADMK. MGR floated the party for the upliftment of the poor and Amma (Jayalalithaa) nurtured it,” Palaniswami said.

The AIADMK general secretary also told Annamalai that he was a “mere appointee” of the BJP high command in Delhi and he could be replaced anytime. “AIADMK is a party in which only the hardworking will rise to the top. But there (BJP), you can be president if Delhi thinks so… You haven’t even been a councillor. How can you say that you will fulfil 500 promises in the first 100 days of being an MP?” Palaniswami asked.

Annamalai, whose statements against Dravidian stalwarts C N Annadurai and J Jayalalithaa were one of the reasons for the AIADMK to snap ties with the BJP and exit the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in September last year, has been targeting the Dravidian party for the past few months.

Continuing with his tirade against Palaniswami, Annamalai on Saturday claimed that the AIADMK general secretary would lose control of the party after the 2024 elections. “After the party’s loss in 2024, the AIADMK will undergo a change in leadership. The party will accept T T V Dhinakaran’s leadership,” Annamalai claimed.