Chennai:A pep talk to keep the party workers in good humour and to boost their sagging morale following a string of electoral defeats, has made former Union Minister and Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) president Anbumani Ramadoss, the target of attack by the principal opposition AIADMK. With the PMK too paying back in the same coin, a full-blown war of words has erupted between the two former allies.
“We are the second largest party in Tamil Nadu now. The AIADMK is not its former self after it had split into four factions – EPS, OPS, VK Sasikala and TTV Dhinakaran. Many parties in the state have either disintegrated or become obsolete. The party will undertake a padayatra in all 40 Lok Sabha constituencies, including Puducherry.
Each PMK worker should secure 100 votes and if that happens, the party will secure a huge victory,” Anbumani had said at the party general council last Friday. Also, he indirectly took a dig at state BJP president K Annamalai, saying, “there is a party which is only interested in garnering media limelight. There is only sound without any substance. You know, which party it is.”
This was in continuation of his earlier assertion that for the 2026 assembly election, the PMK will stitch a winning alliance and that strategy will be implemented in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Having walked out of the AIADMK-led combine nearly six months after the coalition was formed for the 2021 assembly elections, he reiterated recently that the PMK was not part of the alliance.
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However, the PMK maintains that it is part of the NDA at the national level. Naturally, the AIADMK led by former Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami (EPS) could not stomach being labeled as a splinter group. Unlike the other factions, it has the support of 62 out of 66 MLAs and enjoys the support of the overwhelming majority of the functionaries.
AIADMK veteran and former Minister D Jayakumar lashed out at Anbumani asking him not to 'kick the ladder with which he had climbed up'. He was referring to the AIADMK's support for Anbumani's election to the Rajya Sabha though the PMK had only 5 MLAs.
“If Anbumani is ungrateful, even the PMK cadres will not respect him. The PMK exists only because Amma (Jayalalithaa) had accommodated the PMK in the AIADMK alliance. See, the PMK was given 23 seats in the 2021 assembly election, but they could not win more than five seats. Earlier, in 1998 the PMK could enter parliament with four seats, courtesy AIADMK.
And subsequently in the 2001 Assembly elections, the PMK was given 27 seats out of which the party won 20 in the AIADMK alliance. Without the AIADMK, the PMK would not have got this much political space and recognition from the Election Commission,” Jayakumar told the media on Tuesday. “It is highly distressing, but we condemn Anbumani for attempting to denigrate the AIADMK,” he added.
Soon came the PMK's response from party spokesperson K Balu who taunted Jayakumar saying, “it was Jayalalithaa who walked the extra mile to the PMK office to enlist the party in the AIADMK alliance. In 1996, the AIADMK was weak with only 4 legislators. Whenever the AIADMK was down, it was the PMK which had lent its shoulders for its resurrection.
We never claimed that it was on our support that Jayalalithaa or Karunanidhi, who headed a minority government in 2006, were in office. In the assembly bypoll for 21 seats held along with the 2019 LS elections, the PMK helped the AIADMK win 12 seats and EPS retain power,” he said, asking Jayakumar to be cautious in his words. “Jayakumar's remarks are akin to a person cutting the branch at the bottom by sitting on the edge,” he added.
