On 11 July 2022, the AIADMK general council appointed Edappadi K Palaniswami as the party’s interim general secretary and expelled O Pannerselvam and three of his loyalists.
O Panneerselvam (left) and Edappadi K Palaniswami (right) have been locked in a bitter power struggle since the passing of party leader J Jayalalithaa in 2016. (Sourced)
The Supreme Court, on Friday, 19 January, refused to interfere with a Madras High Court order rejecting the pleas of O Panneerselvam and his supporters against the AIADMK general council resolution expelling them from the party.
A Bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta told senior advocate KK Venugopal and other senior counsels appearing for Panneerselvam and his supporters that it is “not inclined to interfere with the high court order”.
The Bench said that interfering with the resolution would amount to allowing the suit pending before the civil court.
“If we interfere at this juncture, it will create huge chaos. To us, it appears, there is a split, it will work itself out. Sometimes, it’s better to let things work themselves out,” the Bench said.
The top court, however, directed for expeditious hearing of the pending suits and gave liberty to Panneerselvam and his aides to move applications for consolidation of all the suits.
O Panneerselvam, popularly known as OPS, and his supporters moved the top court challenging the 25 August 2023 order of the Madras High Court that dismissed their appeals against the 28 March 2023 verdict of a single-judge bench.
On 11 July 2022, the AIADMK general council appointed Edappadi K Palaniswami (EPS) as the party’s interim general secretary and expelled O Pannerselvam (OPS) and three of his loyalists.
Soon after the expulsion, OPS said, “EPS cannot oust me from the party because I was selected by its 1.5 crore cadres. I will seek justice from them.”
The general council meeting was held after the Madras High Court earlier rejected a plea from former AIADMK leader OPS to halt the general council meeting.
Soon after the meeting, the ousted OPS and his three loyalists — R Vaithilingam, JCD Prabhakar, and Manoj Pandian — his supporters pelted stones at the AIADMK office.
OPS and others then challenged four resolutions passed during the meeting, including the abolition of the posts of coordinator and joint coordinator and the revival of the post of general secretary.
Justice K Kumaresh Babu, on 28 March 2023, dismissed the petitions holding that he did not find any balance of convenience or irreparable injury in favour of the applicants to grant an injunction.
During the hearing, OPS and others submitted that the party resolutions were arbitrary and against the democratic principles of the party and they were removed from the party without giving them a chance to defend.
Challenging the single-judge order, OPS and others filed pleas in the Madras High Court, which were further dismissed on 25 August 2023.
The leadership tussle has been going on ever since the death of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa in 2016. To keep the party together in 2017, OPS was appointed the party coordinator and EPS the co-coordinator.
(With PTI inputs)
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