The AIADMK head office at Royapettah in Chennai, which was sealed by revenue authorities on July 11 following violence, was unlocked on Thursday. The keys to the premises were handed over to the camp led by interim general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami, following a direction from the Madras High Court.
Shortly before 11 a.m., Tahsildar (Mylapore) T. Jagajivan Ram handed over the keys to P. Mahalingam, manager of the party headquarters, in the presence of former Law Minister and Villupuram district secretary C.Ve. Shanmugam. Earlier, the Revenue Divisional Officer (RDO) (South)/Sub Divisional Magistrate, South Chennai, K. Sai Vardini, issued an order based on the High Court’s ruling.
On Wednesday, the High Court held that Mr. Palaniswami was entitled to take possession of the party headquarters.
On July 11, the party’s head office was sealed as a result of the proceedings initiated by the RDO under Sections 145(1) and 146 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Cr.PC), which followed a clash between the supporters of Mr. Palaniswami and the deposed party coordinator, O. Panneerselvam.
The AIADMK head office presented a picture of a shambles, with the furniture and other property of the party having been damaged. Even a room used by former general secretary Jayalalithaa was in bad shape.
When asked whether a complaint had been submitted to the police, a source in the AIADMK said an assessment was being made, after which a decision would be taken in this regard.
Meanwhile, in a statement, Mr. Palaniswami referred to reports in sections of the media that nine lakh tonnes of rice, kept at godowns of the Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies Corporation in the Cauvery delta, were found unfit for human consumption. He urged the Food Corporation of India to conduct a State-wide probe to find out how many tonnes of rice had gone waste in total.
Separately, AMMK general secretary T.T.V. Dhinakaran, in a couple of tweets, accused the DMK government of not being transparent about the status of the Bill seeking an exemption from the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test for Tamil Nadu.
Referring to the reply given by the Union Minister of State for Home, Ajay Kumar Mishra, in the Lok Sabha, Mr. Dhinakaran said the Tamil Nadu government’s act of having ‘suppressed’ the information regarding the clarifications sought by the Central government had caused suspicion among the people.
