Chennai, May 25:
In a sudden development, days after supporting the Tamil Nadu Government headed by C Joseph Vijay in the Confidence vote in the Assembly and facing the threat of disqualification under the anti-defection law, three rebel AIADMK MLAs on Monday resigned their membership of the House, and joined the ruling TVK, even as five more rebels switched loyalty to the EPS camp after submitting a letter of apology.
The three MLAs are Madurantakam Ms Maragadam Kumaravel, Perundurai Jayakumar and Dharapuram Ms Sathyabama, who were facing the threat of possible disqualification for supporting the government for violating the Party Whip during the trust vote.
The resignation was seen as an pre-emptive move to avoid getting disqualified.
The three Legislators of the Rebel faction headed by former Ministers and AIADMK heavyweights S P Velumani and C Ve Shanmugam, met Speaker JCD Prabhakar at his Chamber in the State Secretariat and persoanlly handed over their resignation letters, exactly 24 days after getting elected to the 234-member House and 12 days after supporting Vijay in the trust vote in the Assembly.
After handing over the resignation letters, the three rebel leaders headed straight to senior TVK leader and PWD Minister Aadhav Arjuna’s chamber, met him and formally joined the TVK.
Inducting them into the TVK by presenting them shawls, Arjuna said “let’s us travel together as one family”.
Once the three seats were notified as vacant, the three MLAs are likely to contest the bypolls on TVK ticket and coudl get re-elected to the House.
Meanwhile, in a related development, five more supporters of the rebel camp, met AIADMK General Secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami and shifted loyalties causing further dent in the rival camp. The five MLAs has submitted a letter of apology for violating the Whip and requested EPS not to initiate action under anti-defection law. Accepting it, leaders of EPS faction met the Speaker and urged him not to take any action against the five MLAs and wanted to proceed against the remaining 17 rebel MLAs.
The crisis in the AIADMK, which had been successive losses in all the elections and fared miserably in this year’s Assembly elections finishing a distant third, came to the fore after 25 of the 47 MLAs (22 with EPS side) supported the government in the Trust vote on May 13 to enable TVk which fell short of majority after emerging as the single largest party and the results throwing up a hung assembly, with both the camps claiming legitimacy.
Since the rebel group lacked 2/3rd majority on their side, the EPS camp had petitioned the Speaker seeking to initiate action against them under the anti-defection law.
With five MLAs from the rebel group switching loyalty to the EPS side, Palaniswami’s MLA support base rose to 27, 17 remained with the rebel group and three have quit and joined the TVK. With the likelihood of more rebels toeing the line of the three who joined the TVK, the Velumani-Shanmugam camp was likely to face more desertions–including the possibility of shifting loyalty to EPS.