This is not the first time that the meeting of the AIADMK’s general council is becoming a subject of controversy.
In September 1976, when the party, at its general council meeting in Coimbatore, decided to change its name from the ‘Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’ to the ‘Anaithinthia Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’ (All India Anna DMK), there was opposition from a section of leaders which included Kovai Chezhian, former MLA, G. Viswanathan, the then Member of Parliament, and P. Srinivasan, former Deputy Speaker of the Assembly (1971-74).
Later, the dissidents were expelled from the party. They had even claimed that no resolution was moved and adopted at the general council meeting for converting the party into an all-India party. They contended that a party could be judged as an all-India party only by its activities and not by changing its name, according to a news item published by The Hindu on October 14, 1976.
“There was one more reason behind our opposition. We had resisted his [M. G. Ramachandran] insistence to have the image of Anna [DMK founder and former Chief Minister C.N. Annadurai] tattooed on the forearms of members of the party,” recalls Mr. Viswanathan, adding that at the general council, MGR had allowed the members to express both views - favourable to his position and critical of his stand.
Mr. Viswanathan rejoined the AIADMK a few years later; got elected to the Assembly from Anaicut and Arcot constituencies in 1980 and 1991 and served as Food and Cooperation Minister (November 1991 - May 1993) in the first AIADMK Ministry (1991-96) headed by Jayalalithaa.
Chezhian could not rehabilitate himself politically. After the expulsion from the AIADMK, he ran a party of his own, Tamil Desiya Katchi, briefly. On returning to the AIADMK, he was made vice-chairman of the State Planning Commission in April 1978 when M.G. Ramachandran was Chief Minister. Chezhian quit the post in March 1980 when he decided to go back to the DMK. He was also the founder president of the State Kongu Vellala Gounders’ Federation. He produced about 20 feature films, including some in Hindi and some joint productions with the celebrated lyricist Kannadasan. He died in Chennai in March 2000.
Srinivasan, who shot to fame by defeating the Congress stalwart K. Kamaraj in Virudhunagar as a nominee of the DMK during the 1967 Assembly election and again won from the constituency in 1971, returned to his parent party in October 1977. For the third time to the Assembly, he got elected from Sivakasi in 1989. Subsequently, he joined the Congress. At the time of his death in January 2009, he was in the AIADMK.
Mr. Viswanathan, who also represented Vandavasi twice (1967-77) in the Lok Sabha, has had a far more successful career in the field of education than in politics. In 1984, he founded the Vellore Engineering College, which is now popularly called VIT [Vellore Institute of Technology], a deemed to be university. “The engineering college that started with an intake of 180 students in 1984 has evolved as a university with four campuses….It attracts students and professors from different parts of the world. It houses more than 1,000 international students on campus,” says the profile section of Mr. Viswanathan on the VIT website.
“Had I not taken on him [MGR] publicly then, I would have been in his fist Cabinet in 1977,” the former Minister observes, adding that it was MGR who had conveyed his willingness to take him back into the party after Mr. Viswanathan’s brief stint in the Janata party.
