Former AIADMK minister and dissident leader C Vijayabaskar on Tuesday resigned from his MLA post and submitted a letter to Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker JCD Prabhakar.
In an official statement, Prabhakar said that the resignation letter was handwritten by Vijayabaskar and was proper and in accordance with the rules of the association and hence it was duly accepted.
Vijaya Bhaskar, a former minister who held the health portfolio in the erstwhile AIADMK regime, represented Viralimalai in Pudukkottai district.
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He was among the AIADMK rebel leaders who voted for the TVK regime in the vote of confidence held in the Assembly on May 13.
Earlier, four more AIADMK MLAs resigned from their post as legislators and later joined the ruling TVK.
Before resigning as MLA, Vijaya Bhaskar, without directly naming AIADMK chief Edappadi K Palaniswami, attacked him, saying leadership was not about power or arrogance, but was about everyone accepting commitment.
Also Read: 4 former AIADMK ministers and 6 former MLAs join TVK, citing disrespect
The former Minister of Health said, in a post on social media: “Leadership is neither authority nor arrogance…it is a sincere embrace.”
He added: “How can a leadership win the hearts of the people when it cannot win the hearts of its cadres who are working hard for the party? Is a real journey possible even in a place where feelings are not respected? #Just a question.”
Displacement of prominent faces
Since the May 4 Assembly election results, the AIADMK has been grappling with a growing rebellion within its ranks. The first major setback came on May 13, when 25 rebel MLAs defied the party whip and voted in favor of the confidence motion moved by Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay in the Assembly.
Opposition has since swelled into an ongoing exodus of leaders toward the ruling TVK party. On Saturday, four former AIADMK ministers – Kadambur Raju, Udumalai Radhakrishnan, MC Sampath and NR Sivapathy – joined the ruling party, citing lack of respect and internal democracy within the AIADMK.
They were joined by six former AIADMK MLAs – Sundararaj, Rajamuthu, Manraj, Rajavarman, Panneerselvam and Govindasamy – as well as former MP A Ivarasan. Two former DMK MLAs, P Kamaraj and MS Shanmugam, also joined TVK in the presence of party leaders N Anand and Aadhav Arjuna in Chennai.
Vijaya Bhaskar’s resignation marks the latest setback for the AIADMK, which has struggled to contain internal dissent following its defeat in the Assembly elections.
