The dis­sent­ers, who had tried to oust Palan­iswami as the party chief cit­ing the set­back in the Assembly elec­tion, were forced to a corner after a series of devel­op­ments, includ­ing the TVK deny­ing Cab­inet posts, deser­tion of MLAs to the rul­ing party and Palan­iswami camp, and the threat of dis­qual­i­fic­a­tion hanging over their heads for hav­ing viol­ated the whip to vote against the con­fid­ence motion.

After the real­ity of their situ­ation hit them, the rebels ini­ti­ated hec­tic par­leys with Palan­iswami to strike a com­prom­ise. Such was their situ­ation that they even had to give up the face-sav­ing demand to be rein­stated to their older party pos­i­tion, from which Palan­iswami had unce­re­mo­ni­ously ous­ted them for dis­obey­ing his order.

Finally, with no other option left, the rebels decided to return to remain under Palan­iswami’s lead­er­ship. On Wed­nes­day, the 14 MLAs remain­ing in the rebel camp met the party chief at his Gre­en­ways Road res­id­ence. Reports said they tendered writ­ten apo­logy for viol­at­ing party dis­cip­line.

Con­spicu­ous by his absence C Ve Shan­mugam, the strong­man from Vil­lupuram who led the rebel­lion against Palan­iswami. Dur­ing the days when they seemed to have the upper hand, the under­stand­ing seemed to be that he would lead the party while another senior leader, SP Velumani, would be the party’s floor leader.

On Wed­nes­day, however, the decim­a­tion of the dis­sent­ers was com­plete: Of the 25 MLAs, four resigned and joined the TVK, six had returned to Palan­iswami camp already, the remain­ing MLAs fol­lowed, leav­ing Shan­mugam isol­ated.

Later, they went along with lead­ers from the Palan­iswami fac­tion to meet Speaker JCD Prabhakar to with­draw the let­ters that they had sub­mit­ted earlier seek­ing the dis­qual­i­fic­a­tion of the MLAs of both fac­tion. The rebels also gave up on the claim for recog­nising Velumani as the floor leader and C Vijayabas­kar as the party Whip. Now, there is only one claimant for the floor leader pos­i­tion, Palan­iswami; and only one Whip, Agri SS Krishamurthy.

Prabhakar said he would announce his decision on the mat­ter on Thursday.

Put­ting up a brave face, Velumani told the media that there was no split in the party. “It was only a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion that we had,” he claimed, adding that even Shan­mugam was in agree­ment about the course of action that they have adop­ted.