AIADMK turns table against DMK for its "horse trading" taunt

Referring to the oft repeated allegation of DMK Working President MK Stalin that the AIADMK government was a "horse trading regime", the ruling party's mouthpiece "Dr Namadhu MGR" said the DMK then had 95 MLAs in the 234-member assembly and ran a "minority government."

"It is them (DMK) who did shameless politics to bring majority for the minority regime by indulging in horse trading with Tirupur Govindasamy and S Ve Shekar who won on an AIADMK ticket from Mylapore," said the Tamil daily, perceived to have the backing of AIADMK Deputy General Secretary TTV Dinakaran.

CPI (M) Tirupur MLA C Govindasamy, who had hobnobbed with DMK leaders, was expelled from the party for anti-party activities and he later joined the DMK in 2010.

Actor-politician Shekar was expelled from AIADMK in 2009 following differences with party chief late J Jayalalithaa. He functioned as an "unattached member" since then and joined BJP after a brief stint in Congress.

During 2006-11, though DMK did not have numbers to make up majority on its own, it had the support of 34 Congress MLAs and AIADMK had 61 MLAs.

Contrasting the past with the present situation, the party mouthpiece said the AIADMK now had a majority with 122 MLAs.

In a veiled reference to former Chief Minister O Panneerselvam-led faction, the party in a conciliatory note said "those who are joining and who will be joining belong to the same family. All contested on the same symbol (Two-leaves)."

VC Arukutty, MLA, a loyalist of Panneerselvam, recently joined Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami faction.

The AIADMK daily also trained its guns on Stalin for ridiculing Palaniswami as playing to the tunes of the Centre.

It asked: "Who signed the MoU for extraction of Methane Coal bed project at the instance of Congress party? It took pot shots at DMK, accusing it of changing stand in respect of the project, initiated during its regime.

In January 2011, Stalin as deputy Chief Minister had signed an MoU with Great Eastern Energy Corporation Limited for the project in Tiruvarur and Thanjavur districts.

On Stalin's allegation that there was a collusion between "corrupt" AIADMK and BJP, the daily hit back by listing several corruption allegations like 2G Spectrum case when DMK was a part of the Congress-led UPA regime at the Centre.