This sacked leader says only work in AIADMK is carrying Jayalalithaa’s photo

Pazha Karuppaiah, 65, had made his speech last week and was expelled from the party’s primary membership Wednesday.

AIADMK, jayalalithaa, pazha karuppaiah, india news

Pazha Karuppaiah has quit has MLA,

Sacked by his party after a speech last week, an AIADMK leader resigned as an MLA too on Thursday, launching an attack on the party in the process.

Pazha Karuppaiah, 65, had made his speech last week and was expelled from the party’s primary membership Wednesday. At the anniversary function of Cho S Ramaswamy’s Tughlak magazine, he had said, “Things have reached a stage when the public are being asked by officials to go and meet politicians to get even a water connection. The nexus works between a councillor and the local engineer, or a minister and government secretaries. And they share what they get, a mutually beneficial business.”

Had bureaucrats not been so corrupt, he added, politicians wouldn’t have been able to make so much money. “Even a councillor who serves people on the ground has three houses, four wives and two cars,” he said.

He also praised U Sagayam, IAS, who is involved in a showdown with the government.

At another function, organised by the Russian embassy, he had reportedly delivered a speech praising communism.

After Jayalalithaa announced his expulsion calling his actions “contrary to party ideology”, Karuppaiah met journalists and said, “Keeping Amma’s picture in one’s shorts pocket and falling flat on cue is about all the political work for an AIADMK leader now.”

Karuppaiah, MLA from Chennai Harbour, has hopped a number of parties. Hailing from Karaikudi in Sivaganga district, he is a college dropout who started with the Youth Congress in 1972 and went on to become the party’s Karaikudi town president. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was with the Janata Party before shifting to the DMK. He produced a Tamil movie with Vijayakanth in the late 1980, with DMK chief M Karunanidhi as the dialogue writer.

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He left the DMK in the early 1990s and joined Vaiko’s MDMK and then returned to the Congress, before joining the AIADMK in 2008.
An eloquent speaker and also a writer, he has a failing according to people who have known him — loose talk among friends.

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