PMK quits AIADMK-led alliance in Tamil Nadu

The Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) today decided to exit from the AIADMK-led Opposition alliance in Tamil Nadu. The party, led by its founder S Ramadoss, also father of former Union health minister Anbumani Ramadoss, had jumped from the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance to the AIADMK once before this May’s Lok Sabha election.

In a statement today, the PMK said the latest factor that led it to walk out was after C V Shanmugam, a former education minister from the AIADMK, said he was pursuing a case against the PMK founder and his son, Anbumani, with 20 others, despite the police having decided not to prosecute them for want of evidence.

He had petitioned the high court here in this regard on an attack on his home in 2006 at the town of Tindivanam. On which, the HC ordered a halt to the proceedings in this regard at a Tindivanam court.

A strong backward caste-based party, the PMK had switched alliance partners in each of the past six elections. Each time, except for this one, it had emerged as part of the winning combination.

This time, it had contested for seven Lok Sabha seats; it got none. After a decade when it was a partner alternately of both the BJP and the Congress at the Centre, enjoying minsiterial berths, it has left with none.

The PMK had aligned with the NDA, of which the AIADMK was then a partner, in 1998, and continued with it for the 1999 Lok Sabha polls, when the AIADMK went to the Congress camp, while the DMK struck an alliance with the BJP. But during the 2001 state assembly polls, PMK snapped ties with the DMK to align with the AIADMK.

But two months after the polls, PMK was back in the DMK-BJP fold, as AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa refused to give a Rajya Sabha seat to the party.

Again in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, it dumped the NDA along with the DMK, to join the UPA and continued to be in the alliance for the 2006 assembly polls. But its alliance with the ruling DMK collapsed in the run-up to the 2009 elections.