Kamal Ghorui
O Panneerselvam
CHENNAI: Three-time chief minister and expelled AIADMK leader O Panneerselvam, 75, is likely to join DMK on Friday, multiple sources told TOI. DMK may give him a seat, probably Bodinayakkanur in Theni, which he won in 2021, to contest in the coming assembly election.OPS, who has been fighting long — and so far unsuccessful — battles in courts and before Election Commission of India (ECI) to return to, if not regain control of AIADMK, is expected to join the rival party in the presence of chief minister and DMK president M K Stalin at Anna Arivalayam, the DMK headquarters.
Sources said OPS, who had been sending feelers to DMK, took the decision after AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami welcomed AMMK chief T T V Dhinakaran, another expelled AIADMK leader, into NDA. EPS was firm that he wouldn’t take back OPS.DMK leaders said there was an exchange of messages with OPS. “We told him to join our party. He is scheduled to join tomorrow morning,” a senior DMK leader told TOI on Thursday. OPS, who had checked into a hotel on Radhakrishnan Salai, remained unreachable.Panneerselvam’s supporters R Vaithilingam and Paul Manoj Pandian resigned their MLA posts and joined DMK recently. In August, Panneerselvam withdrew from NDA, citing “insults” from the BJP camp. Four months later, he called on Union home minister Amit Shah to convey that he would not join NDA unless the AIADMK factions are unified.On Sunday, Panneerselvam said Amit Shah had told him that the DMK alliance is strong enough to win against a divided AIADMK. “I pleaded with him to bring together the groups and unify the party,” OPS said. “He (Shah) said he had tried to persuade (EPS) but he (EPS) wouldn’t listen … Shall I join the Sankara mutt?”OPS supporters said the decision wasn’t an easy one. “Some of his relatives were not keen on his joining DMK,” said a source. “But he felt it was the right thing to do in the circumstances. “He wants to take on Palaniswami,” said another aide. “He can do it only when he joins a powerful force like the DMK. It is, after all, our parent party.”Then AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalithaa chose OPS as the stand-in chief minister twice — in 2001 and 2014 — when she faced legal challenges. OPS again became CM in 2016 after Jayalalithaa’s death, but he lost the post within a couple of months following a power struggle. He served as deputy CM and joint coordinator of AIADMK, but soon his differences with EPS grew. In July 2022, EPS got the AIADMK bylaws amended, eliminating the dual leadership structure and expelling OPS from the party.As for the seat OPS is likely to get, a DMK leader said, “There are contenders in our party for the Bodinayakkanur seat. He may be given some other seat in the region.” In the 2024 general election, Panneerselvam, an NDA ally, contested as an independent candidate from Ramanathapuram and came second, with 3.42 lakh votes.
