The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on Monday removed four loyalists of TTV Dinakaran from party posts and expelled five, a day after the ousted party leader won the bye-election in Chennai’s Radhakrishnan Nagar Assembly constituency.
Dinakaran on Sunday became the first candidate in 13 years to defeat the ruling party in a bye-election, The New Indian Express reported.
District secretaries P Vetrivel, NG Partiban, M Rengaswamy and Thanga Tamilselvan were sacked from their posts, and VP Kalairajan, V Muthaiah, V Pugazhendi, Nazhil Sampath and CR Sarawathi were removed from the party for anti-party activities, Chief Minister E Palaniswami and his deputy O Panneerselvam said in a joint statement.
The decision was made at a high-level committee meeting that was convened earlier on Monday to discuss the party’s performance in the bye-poll.
The AIADMK’s candidate, E Madhusudhanan, came a distant second in the election, garnering 48,306 votes against Dinakaran’s 89,013 votes.
“It is a victory for all,” Dinakaran had told reporters after the result came in on Sunday. “This government will not be here for two more months. Two leaves symbol was a victory symbol when it was with Amma [Jayalalithaa]. But now it’s with the villains, how can they win.”
P Vetrivel, one of the six forced to step down, was booked by the Chennai Police on December 20, a day before polling, for releasing a video clip of late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa from when she was undergoing treatment at Chennai’s Apollo Hospital before her death in 2016.
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