Tamil Nadu

One more rebel DMDK MLA meets Jayalalithaa

PTI

In more trouble to actor-politician Vijayakant's DMDK, one more party legislator on Wednesday called on Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, joining five dissident MLAs of the party, who had met the AIADMK supremo.

R Santhi of Senthamangalam constituency (Namakkal district), called on Jayalalithaa at the state Secretariat here and presented a memorandum to her regarding constituency-related demands.

Santhi appreciated the Chief Minister for delivering welfare measures and congratulated her for completion of two years in office, a state government release here said.

Having faced the 2011 elections as allies, AIADMK and DMDK, which is the main opposition party in the Tamil Nadu Assembly, parted ways following a heated exchange between Vijayakant and Jayalalithaa in the House last year.

Subsequently, five DMDK MLAs- R Sundarrajan, K Tamil Alagan S Michael Rayappan, C Arun Pandian and T Suresh Kumar, had called on Jayalalithaa and appreciated her government at different points of time, which had not gone down well with the DMDK high command.

Early this year, Rayappan, who along with other dissident MLAs, is allotted separate seating arrangement in the Assembly, was assaulted by some DMDK MLAs. Six of them were awarded a year's suspension which was commuted to six months later by the Speaker P Dhanapal.

DMDK has 29 MLAs in the 234-member state Assembly.

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