CHENNAI: Launching twin attacks on AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami, senior party leader C Ve Shanmugam on Sunday alleged that family politics was gaining ground in the AIADMK and claimed that the party's electoral survival in its northern strongholds was due to "alms given by the PMK".
Speaking to reporters in Tindivanam a day after reports of AIADMK district secretaries urging Palaniswami to appoint his son Mithun as either party youth wing secretary or IT wing secretary, he said there was nothing objectionable about anyone entering public life, including the son of a political leader.
"If he wants to enter politics, let him enter politics openly and work among the people. Why should there be such drama," he asked, alleging that the AIADMK, which had traditionally offered opportunities for ordinary cadres to rise to positions of power, was gradually moving towards becoming a family-centric organisation.
The second salvo was on caste lines, during which he claimed that 31 out of the 47 constituencies that the AIADMK won was due to the alms given by the PMK. "If not for the alliance with the PMK, the AIADMK would have stumbled into a victory or lost heavily in northern districts like Ariyalur, Cuddalore, Villupuram, Kallakurichi, Tiruvannamalai, Vellore, Dharmapuri, and even in (the western) Salem," he said.
Political observers noted that Shanmugam, a Vanniyar strongman from Villupuram, was using PMK's Vanniyar vote bank to drive home the point that EPS has lost his clout with his Gounder base in his home turf - the western belt. The party won only 18 seats out of the 57 contested across the Kongu region, a steep decline from its 2021 tally of 44 seats.
During the post-election chaos, Shanmugam was the key figure leading the dissident MLAs who rebelled against Palaniswami, before the efforts to take over the party fizzled out and most of them returned to the fold.