Chennai: Fulfilling the key demand of Deputy Chief Minister and Party coordinator O Panneerselvam’s camp, the ruling AIADMK today announced the formation of a 11-member steering committee to guide the party in the Assembly polls to be held in April-May 2021.
After marathon discussions on the composition of the committee, that started yesterday morning and spilled over past midnight and stretched till 3 early this morning, Chief Minister and joint coordinator Edappadi K Palaniswami announced the members of the committee after which he was formally announced as the AIADMK’s CM candidate for the Assembly polls by Panneerselvam.
The steering committee members were Ministers Dindigul C Sreenivasan, P Thangamani, S P Velumani, D Jayakumar, C Ve Shanmugam and R Kamaraj from the Palaniswami side and former MLA J C D Prabhakaran, P H Manoj Pandian, P Mohan, R Gopalakrishnan and C Manickam representing Panneerselvam’s side.
The formation of the steering committee was the OPS’s long-pending demand for the merger of factions after the death of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa and it remained the bone of contention between the two camps.
As per the agreement worked out between the two camps, the steering committee contained six members from the Chief Minister’s side and five from Panneerselvam’s side, on the lines of what was agreed upon at the time of the merger of the two factions in 2017.
When the issue was raised by Panneerselvam at the recent high-level committee and at the last week’s executive committee meetings, Palaniswami said it was not feasible now.
However, Panneerselvam persisted with the issue and it was finally agreed by Palaniswami after hectic and multiple parleys, Ministers and senior leaders had with both of them separately.
The main objective of this committee was to guide the party and on how to face the elections in unitedly, sources said.