Chennai: The BJP’s central leadership is urging for a truce between deposed AIADMK leader O. Panneerselvam (OPS) and the party’s interim General Secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami (EPS).
Sources in the BJP told IANS that the party does not want any differences that may affect the 2024 general elections, and that it wants a grand alliance between OPS, EPS, V.K. Sasikala and T.T.V. Dhinakaran so that the NDA could gain ground in the state.
OPS and Sasikala have met many AIADMK leaders at the behest of the BJP central leadership and sources told IANS that recently EPS was in New Delhi, where the BJP’s national leadership had clearly told him to sort out differences and forge unity with OPS.
The powerful Thevar community, to which both Sasikala and OPS belong, has also come in support of the duo. The Thevars have been traditional supporters of the AIADMK and the community has high prominence in southern Tamil Nadu that can influence votes in favour of the party.
With both Sasikala and OPS, the most prominent faces of the Thevar community, being out of reckoning in the AIADMK, the community elders had met and decided to throw their weight behind the duo.
In another development, EPS informed the Supreme Court on Friday that there won’t be any elections for the post of AIADMK General Secretary until the case is heard by the apex court.
OPS had filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the Madras High Court ruling against him.
With the Supreme Court set to hear the case on the ousting of OPS from the AIADMK, Sasikala and OPS have upped their ante to bring a favourable decision before the case is heard.
While EPS is having a brute majority in the party’s General Council, the intervention of the BJP’s central leadership will come as the support base for Sasikala and OPS.
OPS and Sasikala are also banking on the support of the grassroots AIADMK cadres, who are upset at the failure of the party’s leadership in countering the DMK government on its ‘failures’.
OPS, according to party sources, had recently met Dhinakaran, the Chairman of the Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK) and the nephew of Sasikala, and devised strategy to take over the AIADMK.
With only a short time remaining for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP’s national leadership does not want a rift within the AIADMK and is hence trying to forge unity between the warring factions.
–IANS
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