Talks have ended in a draw; I will take a call on 2026 alliance: Ramadoss

Chennai: Paatali Makkal Katchi (PMK) founder S Ramadoss on Thursday said that attempts by well-wishers and friends to reach a compromise between him and his son Anbumani have ended in a “draw.” He also asserted that he will continue to lead the party until the 2026 assembly elections and will take a call on the alliance thereafter.

An emotional Ramadoss, against whom his son Anbumani has launched a rebellion without explicitly stating so, wondered why he cannot lead the party for another two years after having built the outfit from scratch and steering it for about 40 years.

He further suggested that Anbumani can take over the PMK—an influential party among the dominant Vanniyars spread across northern Tamil Nadu—after the 2026 assembly elections are over. However, he alleged that his son is in a “hurry” and accused him of “not working enough” to assume the leadership role.

Ramadoss’ remarks assume significance since it comes a week after RSS ideologue S Gurumurthy and senior AIADMK leader ‘Saidai’ S Duraisamy met him at his Thailapuram farm house out of “courtesy.”

“Several rounds of talks were held (to arrive at a compromise). But the talks have ended in a draw. No resolution has been found so far. The talks have failed,” Ramadoss said.

The senior Ramadoss had appointed himself as the president of the PMK in April after relegating his son as working president, setting the ball rolling for a confrontation which has been playing out in the open for the past two months.

Ramadoss, while reading out a long written statement, didn’t spare his daughter-in-law Soumya by alleging that she forced him to anoint Anbumani as the PMK chief in 2022.

“Those who have been calling me as their family deity have stabbed me in the heart. Those who made a ‘walking corpse’ are now taking out padayatra in my name. Everything is drama, and everyone is an actor,” Ramadoss said, blaming his son and daughter-in-law for trying to “usurp” the PMK and rendering him “powerless.”

“A disciple can overshadow his guru, but a son can never overshadow his father. Doing so is against all the tenets of dharma,” Ramadoss said and claimed that Anbumani’s three-year tenure as PMK president has come to an end and a new president will have to be elected by convening the general council.

Ramadoss said he was ready to step down as president of the PMK ahead of the party’s conference in Mamallapuram on May 11 but Anbumani refused to believe his words. “He refused to believe me and that’s why things have come to where they are today,” he said.

Ramadoss has been upset with the PMK tilting towards the BJP for the past few years under Anbumani’s leadership. The party failing to win in its stronghold of Dharmapuri for the second consecutive Lok Sabha polls is cited as one of the factors that led Ramadoss to rethink about the party’s alliance strategy.

He wants the PMK not to water down its core agenda of uplifting the lives of Vanniyars and ally only with Dravidian parties, if needed. PMK, whose influence has been waning even among Vanniyars, still commands a committed vote bank of about 5 per cent and was part of the A B Vajpayee-led government and the UPA-I.

The party which came into being in 1989 primarily to espouse the cause of Vanniyars, had swung like a pendulum between DMK and AIADMK for decades together, and aligned with the BJP after its experiment of going alone failed in 2016.