Madras HC dismisses plea challenging AIADMK’s internal elections

The Madras High Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition challenging the AIADMK’s organisational polls in which O Panneerselvam and Edappadi K Palaniswami were elected unopposed as coordinator and joint coordinator of the party respectively.

The first bench of acting Chief Justice M N Bhandari and Justice P D Audikesavalu termed the petition filed by J Jayachandran, who hails from Hosur in Krishnagiri district, as “not maintainable.”

“What could the ECI do in this AIADMK intra-party elections,” the first bench asked the petitioner who sought a direction from the court to the Election Commission of India (ECI) not to approve the election of OPS and EPS as coordinator and joint coordinator of the party.

Jayachandran had alleged in his petition that he was manhandled at the AIADMK headquarters on December 4 when he had gone to collect nomination papers to contest the elections. He alleged that the election to the posts were held without following established rules like 21 days’ time from the date of announcement to the date of polling and publishing the electoral list.

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The entire proceedings, Jayachandran alleged in his petition, were conducted in such a way to ensure that only the two top leaders filed their nominations for the respective posts.

AIADMK, Tamil Nadu’s principal Opposition party, moved an amendment to its by-laws at the powerful Executive Council meeting on December 1 allowing primary members to elect the coordinator and joint coordinator, in a bid to keep ousted interim general secretary V K Sasikala at bay.

The party released the election schedule on December 2 and declared the unanimous election of OPS and EPS on December 6 as they were the only candidates to file nominations for the posts. A couple of cadres who arrived at the party HQ seeking nomination papers were not entertained.

This is the first time that the AIADMK has conducted organizational polls since J Jayalalithaa’s passing away in 2016 – the General Council in 2016 had used its powers to appoint V K Sasikala as the interim general secretary. However, the same General Council nullified Sasikala’s appointment a year later and introduced the posts of coordinator and joint coordinator by appointing Jayalalithaa as the “permanent general secretary.”

The internal polls that have further legitimized the “dual leadership” is a serious setback to Sasikala’s efforts to take over the AIADMK leadership. According to the AIADMK, Sasikala is not even a primary member of the party after she failed to renew her membership in 2017 after the by-laws were amended to accommodate Panneerselvam as coordinator and Palaniswami as joint coordinator.

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