It was a high-level committee meeting of the ruling DMK at the party headquarters in Arivalayam. Party general secretary and Tamil Nadu water resources minister Duraimurugan walked onto the podium as Chief Minister and party leader M.K. Stalin was on the stage along with the seniors, including T.R. Baalu and A. Raja. When everyone expected him to encourage the rank and file of the party, Duraimurugan sounded dolorous. His voice lacked the usual energy.
“Let us swear in the name of our party founder C.N. Annadurai, M. Karunanidhi and M.K. Stalin, who is now our Anna Durai, that we will keep quiet for sometime, at least until Lok Sabha elections. I will even go to the extent of asking our people not to pass on information (about party leaders). Some people are so ungrateful that they are tipping off the IT department. As a person who has spent 60 years in the party, I feel sad about these developments,” Duraimurugan said.
All is not well in the DMK. The intra-party feud has hit a new high—partymen do not come out to accuse their local leaders or district secretaries, but silently tip off the Income Tax or the Enforcement Directorate and ensure that the opponent is in trouble. No wonder his MP son from Vellore, Kathir Anand, too, was under the ED scanner. Anand was summoned by the ED to appear in connection with an Income Tax seizure of Rs 11.48 crore in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
It all began with the Income Tax searches at Karur in places linked to former electricity and excise minister V. Senthil Balaji. Balaji is now in Puzhal prison after he was arrested by the ED in June this year. Balaji’s bail petition is coming up for hearing at the Supreme Court on November 28, after his multiple pleas seeking bail in the lower court and the Madras High Court, on medical grounds, was rejected.
After Balaji, Higher Education minister K. Ponmudy came under the ED scanner over alleged financial irregularities. His MP son, Gautham Sigamani, was also brought under the ED scanner. Ponmudy was questioned by the ED for several hours. Ponmudy has again been summoned by the ED for interrogation on November 30.
After Balaji and Ponmudy, the next in line was Jagathrakshakan. He was searched by the Income Tax. Jagath is considered one of the money bags of the DMK. The latest raids targeted Tamil Nadu’s Public Works Department and Highways Minister EV Velu. The Income Tax sleuths conducted searches in more than 40 locations linked to Velu and his family members over alleged tax evasion by his family-run educational institutions, for over a week.
Sources say that the next in line to face action by the central agencies could be Local administration minister and DMK veteran K.N. Nehru, food minister R. Sakkarapani, commercial taxes minister P. Moorthy and rural development minister I. Periyasamy.
Minister Anita Radhakrishnan is already under the ED scanner. Also DMK general secretary and Water Resources Minister Duraimurugan is facing ED scrutiny in the alleged sand mining scam across the state. The ED is on a raid spree in all the sand mining quarries in Tamil Nadu, collecting data and evidence to build a water tight case against Duraimurugan and eventually link the first family. Ministers KKSSR Ramachandran and Thangam Thennarasu are already under trouble as the DVAC case against them was reopened by Justice Anand N. Venkatesh in the Madras High Court.
“The DMK was anticipating the searches even a year before. There may not be any seizures. But the inquiry and the barrage of questions based on the information the agencies had collected has put the DMK veterans in trouble,” says a senior bureaucrat who had been closely following the searches by the central agencies in Tamil Nadu.
He says that there will be more actions in the near future in the run up to the Lok Sabha elections.
But within the DMK, though the party leadership looks unshaken, most regional satraps have come under the radar of the central agencies making it difficult for the party to work on the ground. For instance, Balaji who is considered as the key leader of the party in the western region has been in prison for the past five months making it difficult for the party to begin election work in the western region.
And Velu, who is known to be one of the money bags of the party and a veteran who controls parts of northern Tamil Nadu for the DMK, is reportedly under severe political pressure after the raids. The scrutiny on Ponmudy, the strong man from Villupuram and other northern districts, has disturbed the party’s internal structure of the party in his region.
Though the age-old Dravidian party has been putting a brave face against the scrutiny by the central agencies, all is not well in the DMK. Velu revealed in a press conference that all his aides were reduced to tears due to rigorous questioning. There are over a dozen ministers in Stalin’s cabinet and a bunch of MPs who are under scrutiny in alleged tax evasion or money laundering cases. The raids have disturbed the rank and file of the party as the leaders are running behind the agencies to defend themselves. On the other side, it has spoiled the image of the party by saying the DMKians are corrupt.
“We will not be surprised if our own leader and chief minister is summoned by the agencies like what had happened to Arvind Kejriwal. The idea is to weaken our party’s influence in the state and damage the image of DMK. The BJP has already half succeeded in this,” says a DMK senior minister on conditions of anonymity.