Stop worrying about ruling alliance, EPS tells dist secretaries
Chairing the meeting with district secretaries at the party headquarters, Palaniswami elaborated on things under their control and how to make use of them to turn the table in their favour.
Edappadi Palaniswami at the party’s district secretaries meeting on Wednesday
CHENNAI: General Secretary of AIADMK Edappadi K Palaniswami appealed to the district secretaries to focus on ‘strengthening the party structure’ to attract political parties for an alliance ahead of the Assembly polls in 2026.
He also advised the functionaries to ‘stop worrying about the strength’ of their arch-rival DMK-led front and work hard to prove the prowess of the AIADMK, which registered massive victories by going solo in the past.
Chairing the meeting with district secretaries at the party headquarters, Palaniswami elaborated on things under their control and how to make use of them to turn the table in their favour. “We should stop thinking about the DMK-led alliance. It is not in our hands and what we should do is strengthen our party structure in a way that should attract political parties to join us. This is the message from our leader,” said a district secretary, quoting Palaniswami.
Alliance would not make any difference to the party without regaining its core strength, he said and recalled the polling percentage of the party in 2019 and 2024 to justify his stand. The AIADMK, despite being a ruling party and heading an alliance, secured only around 19% of votes in the LS polls in 2019. It improved the voting percentage in the April 19 polls for the LS this year without formidable alliance partners. Meanwhile, a senior leader rejected the talk on actor-turned-politician Vijay during the meeting. He noted that the actor’s Tamiliga Vettri Kazhagam is just a few months old party with an ‘untested’ vote bank. It is too early to talk about it.
Party spokesperson and former minister D Jayakumar also echoed the same after the meeting and said that they would expose the wrongdoing and wrong policies of the present dispensation.
The functionaries have also been dissuaded from criticising the allies of the DMK and asked to go ballistic against the government and its “anti-people policies and prevailing law and order situations” but spare their allies and its leaders from criticism.
The district secretaries have also informed Palaniswami to take up a state-wide tour in December.
Meanwhile, Palaniswami announced that the party’s Madurai district unit would protest against the DMK regime on November 16 for reportedly stalling the drinking water project for Madurai district and failing to relay the damaged roads.
