AIADMK Deputy General Secretary TTV Dinakaran has thrown an open challenge to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswamy on Friday.

Dinakaran bringing in most of his loyalists announced a new set of office bearers. He even declared that to mobilize party cadre in his favor, he would undertake a state-wide tour from August 14. Addressing a media conference on a day of fast developments, Dinakaran said, on Avvai Shanmugam Salai, he would visit the party headquarters,and “whenever he wished” and nobody, including the police, had any right to prevent him from entering the premises “which is like my home.”

He also said that, only to pave way for the merger of the EPS and OPS factions of the AIADMK, he “kept quiet” from the past two months. And since the merger did not happen, he has now announced the tour plan as planned earlier. Dinakaran further insisted that he alone was “capable” of unifying the AIADMK. He announced appointment of additional office bearers to prepare the party for a sweep in the 2019 parliament elections, “which is my aim”.

Dinakaran through the 30-minutes conference asserted that  he was still the “boss” and “everyone would fall in line” eventually since “we re the only people who can unite the AIADMK.”

“I will continue to lead the party in the absence of general secretary Chinamma even if the merger takes place. Everyone should understand that the only person who has the right to expel anyone from the party is the general secretary and in her absence, only I can expel. And no one can expel us,” Dinakaran said.

When asked about the Chief Minister and the Ministers distancing themselves from the family, he said only few ministers, including Finance Minister D Jayakumar, had said they (Sasikala and he) should be kept away from the party.

“I have been maintaining that these ministers were speaking out of fear. And now I pity their situation because they ditched us thinking that the King (BJP) would protect them. But, now they are left nowhere,” he said, in what appears declaring war against the BJP as well.

Dinakaran also reminded CM Palaniswami and his cabinet colleagues that after the Supreme Court in the DA case convicted her in February 2015, it was Sasikala who had installed their government.

“If she (Sasikala) had left the place (Koovathur resort without announcing the CM’s name), they would have known (their real situation). It was Chinamma who installed this government and everyone should realize that,” Dinakaran said.

There was “only some misunderstanding and no big fight” between the two AIADMK factions and even that could be “cleared very soon”, said Dhinakaran, adding ominously, “Taking action against anyone would not take even a minute, but that’s not the right thing to do”. He said his “main goal” was to “unite” the two factions and he was already working on it. Dinakaran released two press statements in a gap of just an hour, before addressing the press conference. The first statement was about the statewide trip he would launch from Melur in Madurai district and the second one about appointing the new set of office bearers “to prepare the party for the Parliament polls”.

“People who have worked for the party have been rewarded. My only aim is to ensure that the party sweeps the LS polls,” Dinakaran said.

SUPRAJA