Shashwati Chowdhury
Published on: June 29, 2022 at 17:25 IST
Edappadi K Palaniswami hit back by approaching the Supreme Court to vacate an injunction order granted by the Madras High Court had issued in favour of O Panneerselvam’s side. This came when an AIADMK general council member had sought to punish the party’s joint coordinator and five of his key associates for contempt of court.
A Division Bench of the HC restrained the AIADMK general council from adopting any resolutions other than the 23 that had been pre-approved by the dual leadership, which comprised of OPS and EPS, at around 3.30 am on June 23.
On Tuesday, petitioner M. Shanmugam accused the newly elected presidium chairman A. Tamil Magan Hussain, Palaniswami, C. Ve. Shanmugam, K.P. Munusamy, D. Jayakumar, and Dindigul C. Sreenivasan with intentionally disobeying the court orders.
Hussain’s appointment as permanent presidium chairman and the fixing of the following general council meeting were two things he intended to stall.
The EPS faction moved to the SC to vacate the interim order on its part. According to a senior leader and key EPS associate, the court cannot interfere in internal party affairs.
General council member M. Shanmugam of Tirupur filed the present petition referring to a restraint order issued by a Division Bench on June 23.
The petitioner said that Palaniswami and Jayakumar and Sreenivasan deliberately disobeyed the High Court order by inserting an item which did not appear in the list of 23 resolution. The petitioner sought to punish Palaniswami for moving the resolution appointing Hussain as presidium chairman and Jayakumar and Sreenivasan for seconding the resolution.
In an effort, to halt Hussain from taking over as permanent presidium chairman of the AIADMK and to restrain its leaders from conducting the July 11 general council meeting as planned at the June 23 meeting, Shanmugam has argued that these decisions had no force of law as they were not authorised jointly by the party’s coordinator and joint coordinator.