Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) founder S.Ramadoss in Chennai on March 27, 2023.
| Photo Credit: JOTHI RAMALINGAM B
The Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), a party that bases its support on the Vanniyar caste in north Tamil Nadu, is headed for rough times, with its founder S. Ramadoss on January 2 insisting that his choice for the post of youth wing president, Parasuraman Mukundan, who is the son of Ramadoss’ eldest daughter Gandhimathi, is “final”.
Ramadoss said: “There is no change in the appointment of Mukundan as youth wing president. I have given him the appointment order the next day itself. No one can change the decision since it was announced in the general council. Nobody in the party should get upset. Anbumani [PMK president and Ramadoss’ son] also should not get upset.”
Acknowledging that he had a difference of opinion with his son, Ramadoss insisted that it was a thing of the past. “There is no difference of opinion with Anbumani now. What Anbumani and I spoke in the general council is an internal issue within the party. We have already spoken,” he claimed in a statement.
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The announcement, first made on December 28, had split the party wide open, with Anbumani openly disagreeing with his father on the stage that day. Later, honorary party president G.K. Mani and other party seniors brokered a peace between father and son. Anbumani travelled to his father’s Thailapuram residence on December 29 and later told the press that he had no differences with his father.
“Ayya is everything to us,” he said. He explained that in a democratic party there were bound to be disagreements and that it was normal. “We discussed the party’s progress, pushing our demand of the caste census, etc… The 2026 Assembly election was also discussed,” Anbumani said after his meeting.
The previous youth wing president of the PMK was Mani’s son, G.K.M. Tamil Kumaran, a film producer. Anbumani was reportedly unhappy with this appointment too when it was made in 2022. Tamil Kumaran had contested the 2010 Pennagaram byelection on the PMK symbol but lost to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s P.N.P. Inbasekaran. Before that, it was Anbumani who was the youth wing president. It is rumoured that he is not keen to have any prominent person in the post, as he believes it might create another power centre within the party.
Since December 30, Anbumani has been meeting district secretaries of the party to shore up his support. He was also assessing his control over the party in the event of another showdown with his father. “It is open war in the family,” said a former office-bearer who left the party ahead of the 2021 election. “Anbumani wants to take the Election Commission route to take control of the party with the help of party seniors. From what I know about the party, the district secretaries will not go against Doctor Ayya [as Ramadoss is called] if he calls them and speaks to them,” he said.
The differences between the two first surfaced ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election, when Ramadoss wanted an alliance with the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) but Anbumani wanted to go with the BJP. The AIADMK had parted ways with the BJP, and it was very keen to have the PMK in its corner. The three parties fought the 2021 Tamil Nadu Assembly election as part of an alliance, and the PMK managed to win five seats.
Also Read | PMK’s alliance with the BJP in Tamil Nadu defies logic
The AIADMK representative deputed for the negotiations with the PMK was a former Minister, C.V. Shanmugam, who almost clinched the deal after some initial hiccups. According to one senior AIADMK member, the deal had included a Rajya Sabha seat for the PMK. Unexpectedly, however, Anbumani announced an alliance with the BJP even as the final touches were being given for the proposed tie-up with the AIADMK.
Although there is a lot of flux within the party, when asked about the possibility of the party splitting into two factions between the father and son, Pongalur Manikandan, formerly a PMK functionary and now an AIADMK sympathiser, said there was no such possibility. “There is no PMK without Doctor Ayya. Everyone knows this. Anbumani also knows this. The PMK became a broad-based party, attracting people like me, because of the approach of Doctor Ayya. That situation does not exist today, but I am unable to think of a PMK without him [Ramadoss],” he said.
Manikandan made it a point to emphasise the phrase “people like me” because he is not a Vanniyar but had joined the party because of Ramadoss’ approach to other intermediate castes. There were others, such as the former Minister, Dalit Ezhimalai, who contributed to expanding the PMK beyond its one-caste voter base.
The peak of this experiment came ahead of the 2016 Assembly election, with Anbumani batting for an inclusive PMK and projecting himself as a chief ministerial candidate. However, the party’s rout in that election made it go back to its traditional vote base. The PMK did not have a single MLA in the 2016 Assembly—a first since it became a force to contend with in 1996. The PMK managed to win five seats in the 2021 election in alliance with the AIADMK and the BJP but lost ground again in 2024 after the party chose the BJP over the AIADMK, with none of its candidates winning a seat.
