CHENNAI: The overt gesturing by AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami to attract actor Vijay’s TVK to its alliance has shown the principal opposition party’s keenness to bring the fledgling party into its fold. However, the TVK is yet to reciprocate similar eagerness, sources from both the parties said.
Multiple sources in the AIADMK acknowledged to TNIE the party’s interest in roping in TVK, against the backdrop of the way the new party handled the aftermath of the recent stampede in Vijay’s rally in Karur that killed 41 people, exposing the extent of the party’s institutional vulnerabilities.
Palaniswami, who has been asserting to form a formidable alliance for the past six months with no success, is now seeing an opportunity to prevent the splitting of anti-DMK votes.
Despite Vijay being critical of the AIADMK of late, Palaniswami strongly criticised the ruling DMK for the loss of lives in Karur while largely sparing the TVK, thus indicating his willingness to support Vijay at this critical juncture.
Palaniswami’s gesture at his rally in Kumarapalayam in Namakkal district on Wednesday, while pointing to a few TVK flags being waved, that people have endorsed the beginning of a new alliance was seen as the party’s unambiguous signal to the TVK.
While TVK’s Namakkal district secretary N Sathish Kumar has been absconding after he was booked by the police for alleged violations during Vijay’s rally in the district, another district-level functionary TNIE reached out to said they have not been informed by the party to show any kind of support to the AIADMK.
He said he did not know the identity of the people who waved TVK flags at the rally. A person working in TVK’s strategy team said the party was at the moment focussed mainly on handling the Karur crisis and was not looking to take a stance on alliance possibilities.
Although Vijay has repeatedly branded the BJP as his ideological enemy, at least five state functionaries in Tamil Nadu BJP opined that they were open to having the TVK in its alliance with the AIADMK, stating that uniting the opposition was important to unseat the DMK.
However, former BJP state president Annamalai told the media on Thursday that he was unsure how the two parties with directly opposing views would come together, while adding that he was not the right person to comment on the matter.
Playing down the AIADMK’s outreach to the TVK, a senior party (AIADMK) leader said, “The general secretary is not bothered about the alliance as of now. He is more focused on his statewide tour.” He, however, added that the TVK, which was highly hopeful of contesting the elections alone earlier, has understood the weakness of its party apparatus in the Karur tragedy. “Therefore, our general secretary thinks let them (TVK) arrive at a clear stance first. Any haste shown could prove strategically wrong,” the functionary said.
(With inputs from Kumaresan S and Subashini Vijayakumar @ Chennai)
