The AIADMK is set for a major show of strength on Sunday, with its golden jubilee conference being held in Madurai – the first big public meeting of the party since multiple courts validated former chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami’s election to its top post months ago. AIADMK general secretary Palaniswami is expected to use the occasion to demonstrate that he is the single, uncontested leader of the party following the death of J Jayalalithaa. The top leadership of the party expects more than 3.5 lakh people to attend the event, which is being held on the outskirts of the temple city of Madurai. A special train has been arranged to transport party workers from Chennai. R B Udhayakumar, one of AIADMK’s popular leaders from Madurai, is in charge of mobilising more than 70,000 people from Madurai district alone. Leaders from other districts have been tasked with mobilising 2,000 to 3,000 people each for the rally. The gathering is being seen as an opportunity to send a strong message, not just to the party’s opponents, but also to its ally BJP, with which it has had a rocky relationship in the past few months. “After we resolved internal party tensions, AIADMK is finally able to make this statement,” a senior leader in charge of conference preparations said. “This asserts the single leadership of Palaniswami and declares that South Tamil Nadu is ours,” he added. Despite the tensions between the AIADMK and the BJP, their alliance is expected to continue ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, with both parties relying on each other for various reasons. However, neither Palaniswami nor any of the other top leaders of the AIADMK attended the BJP’s recent rally in Ramanathapuram, and instead sent a party representative. This was despite the fact that Union Home Minister Amit Shah took part in the rally and launched the padayatra of BJP state president K Annamalai. A former minister from the AIADMK said the Madurai conference would send a message to the BJP leadership in New Delhi that they should not welcome ousted former AIADMK leaders TTV Dhinakaran and O Panneerselvam into the alliance. According to him, the AIADMK leadership had made it clear that party leaders would not sit at the table with Dhinakaran and Panneerselvam as part of the alliance, irrespective of whether the BJP promises them seats from its own share. “If Panneerselvam's support in South Tamil Nadu and the region's caste system are being cited as reasons to bring them into our alliance, tomorrow’s rally will put an end to that,” the former minister said on Saturday, adding that the AIADMK's dominance at the Madurai conference would cement Palaniswami's position as the alliance's most influential figure, like Jayalalithaa. Meanwhile, the ruling DMK has cancelled its planned hunger strike in Madurai on Sunday to protest against NEET. Speaking to The Indian Express, a senior DMK leader said the party was suspending the plans in Madurai keeping in mind the AIADMK event. “A decline of the AIADMK’s strength in Tamil Nadu hurts the DMK as well, because this can only suggest that the BJP is making gains. The government and police have been giving quick clearances to multiple cycling rallies and several events attached to their Madurai conference in neighbouring districts too,” the DMK leader said.
