I was forced to quit, can return, says O Panneerselvam

Chennai: Tamil Nadu chief minister O. Panneerselvam on Tuesday rose in revolt against Sasikala Natarajan and those in support of her taking over the reins of the state administration, alleging that they forced him to resign after manipulating him to cooperate following Jayalalithaa’s demise, and thereafter they humiliated him.

“I have resigned under duress. But I will take back my resignation if people and AIADMK cadres want me to do so. I will stand alone and fight this war,” Mr Panneerselvam said at Marina beach.

A huge army of mediapersons gathered at the Jayalalithaa memorial after news broke that the soft-spoken CM had gone there and was sitting in meditation before the Samadhi where his mentor was laid to rest on December 6. He sat with eyes closed and got up wiping tears after more than 20 minutes.

It took the police a long time to bring the screaming TV crews under some sort of control so that the chief minister could speak his mind out.

After all those years of quiet politics, and those heavy minutes of silence before Amma’s Samadhi, Mr Panneerselvam’s words rang like thunder and are sure to shake the state politics in the coming days, say political analysts.

“There is now no government in Tamil Nadu. They have obtained Panneerselvam’s resignation by coercion. This calls for action,” said Opposition leader M.K. Stalin, the DMK working president.

“I am here now as I was driven by Amma’s soul to come out and reveal the truth,” Mr Panneerselvam said, before launching on the long recall of the hospital events.

“After Amma’s condition became bad, they called me and said I should take the responsibility of the CM’s post to ensure stability of the government and the unity in the party. I hesitated but they said people would only accept me as CM and there would be complications if other names were brought up. They pressured me into saying we should not pave way for those things and after a long consideration, I accepted the responsibility”, he said.

Even though Mr Panneerselvam did not name who ‘they’ were, it is easy to guess as only Sasikala and her family were in control at the Apollo Hospitals.

Mr Panneerselvam said after he took charge as CM, he had undertaken several important assignments such as handling the post-Vardah cyclone situation, the Jallikattu protests and the drinking water crisis to the best of his ability, which won all-round appreciation apart from the desired positive results. But then, even within a few days of his being sworn-in, there were orchestrated demands from his own ministers that Sasikala should take over as CM, he said.

When he told ‘them’ it was not proper for his own ministers to make such statements, they assured him ‘they’ would speak to those ministers, but the clamour for Sasikala to become CM only grew louder, he said.