M.K. Alagiri, once the DMK’s strongman in south, is rarely seen in public functions ever since he was expelled from the party. Recently, he was in Chennai to attend the wedding of his youngest brother Tamizharasu’s son and actor Arulnidhi. As he is no longer on talking terms with his younger brother M.K. Stalin, who personally called on every political leader and bigwig for the wedding, it was left to Mr. Tamizharasu to invite Mr. Alagiri. The once feared leader in the DMK, Mr. Alagiri attended both the wedding and the reception, but sat in a corner behind the stage and watched the ceremony on television.
It is not uncommon to be dropped from the Cabinet when the AIADMK is in power. As party supremo Jayalalithaa controls the party with an iron hand, often the Ministers find themselves at the receiving end for various reasons. One of them is K.P. Munusamy who enjoyed enormous power when he was Municipal Administration Minister. But ever since he was dropped after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, he has been trying to prove his loyalty. Whenever he speaks in the Assembly, reporters get requests to carry the news. With Chief Minister Jayalalithaa contesting the R.K. Nagar by-elections, he is going around the constituency canvassing votes for her. The news and pictures of him on campaign trail were sent to the media houses, but there were not many takers.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has been lying low in Tamil Nadu ever since the crushing defeat of all its candidates in the State in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
The AAP leaders and cadre got their hopes revived with a State level office-bearers’ meeting in Salem city recently. The chief guest at the meeting was Somnath Bharti, MLA and in-charge of the party affairs in the southern States, who has been of late in the news for wrong reasons.
His wife had recently preferred a complaint with the Delhi Commission for Women, accusing him of domestic violence and mental torture. Speaking to presspersons, Mr. Bharti referred to his wife’s complaint and the arrest of former Law Minister Jitender Singh Tomar in a fake degree case as cases of political conspiracy to defame the AAP. Unable to digest its growing popularity, parties such as the BJP and the Congress were trying to portray AAP as anti-women, he claimed.
College principals appeared to have put up a spirited attempt to protect the integrity of government institutions at a 90-minute meeting organised by the Higher Education Secretary earlier this month.
When the Secretary said she received calls for admission to premier aided colleges in Chennai, the principals told her that admissions to aided colleges were only on merit and not on recommendation.
At the meeting, the principals were given three sheets of paper and asked to write down the requirement of their colleges. When maintenance of the institutions came up for discussion, the Secretary told them to use funds received from application sale to maintain toilets. Dismayed, the principals said nearly a third of the applications were sold free, adding that the small revenue from the sale goes towards printing cost.
(Reporting by B. Kolappan, B. Aravind Kumar, Syed Muthahar Saqaf and R. Sujatha)
