CHENNAI: Rebellion is not the word you would normally associate with the AIADMK led by J Jayalalithaa, since the party functioned with ‘military-like’ discipline. Party functionaries feared Jaya’s stick as anyone who sought to step out of line was severely punished.
And yet the AIADMK has a history of rebels popping up from time to time, the latest being former chief minister O Panneerselvam. Over the years were several splinter groups, most of which eventually merged with the parent party after facing electoral defeat.
The first revolt M G Ramachandran faced was in 1984 - nearly 12 years after he founded the party. He expelled former food minister S D Somasundaram, popularly known as SDS, (who defeated former President R Venkataraman in 1967 Assembly elections) from the party for accusing him (MGR) of corruption. SDS belonged to the ‘Mukkulathor’ community and wielded considerable influence in the Cauvery delta districts. He launched his own political party ‘Namadhu Kazhagam’, but could not win even one seat in the 1984 elections. In 1987, on MGR’s return from US after treatment, he merged his outfit with the parent party.
A year after MGR’s demise in 1987, the party witnessed a fierce battle for succession between MGR’s wife V N Janaki and the Jayalalithaa. The first revolt Jaya faced in the faction led by her was in 1988 when four senior members - widely known as the ‘Naalvar Ani’ - ‘Panruti’ S Ramachandran (who was then deputy general secretary of Jaya’s faction), S Thirunavukkarasar (then Thirunavukkarasu) the treasurer of the faction, senior leaders V R Nedunchezhiyan and C Aranganayakam - rebelled against what they termed her “autocratic” way of functioning and alleged mishandling of party funds.
But prior to the 1989 Assembly elections, Thirunavukkarasar and Nedunchezhiyan returned to the Jaya-led faction. However, while Thirunavukkarasar won from Aranthangi, Nedunchezhiyan lost his deposit.
Again in 1996, the party almost witnessed a vertical split after the Assembly poll debacle, when AIADMK won just four out of the 234 seats. And Thirunavukkarasar was bang in the centre of controversy. Ousted for ‘anti-party’ activities, he garnered the support of seven out of the 14 party MPs. He then formed MGR ADMK, popularly known as ‘Poti ADMK’ - the only AIADMK breakaway faction to record considerable success in the polls.
MGR ADMK was part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 1998 and 1999 general elections. The party won two seats in the 2001 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections (Aranthangi and Nagercoil). He subsequently became the Union shipping minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led cabinet in 1999 and served the full five-year term. In 2009, he joined BJP’s rival Congress and last year he became the president of the grand old party’s Tamil Nadu unit.
OPS brought the deja vu moment again after nearly two decades by surprising many last month with his revolt against party general secretary V K Sasikala (Jaya’s aide and now in prison in an assets case).
A striking similarity between the 1996 revolt by Thirunavukkarasar and the present one is that a section of MPs has joined the rebels. Just as 1989 elections established Jaya as the leader, the results of RK Nagar and the upcoming local body polls could decide who would be the undisputed leader of the AIADMK.