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Coimbatore tense after
minister, legislator clash

Tension prevails in Coimbatore after Tamil Nadu minister Pongallur Palaniswamy allegedly assaulted senior ruling DMK legislator C T Dhandapani with a sandal, following an altercation in the state guest house. They also allegedly tore up each others shirts.

The police are on alert to check against any factional fallout.

The minister has maintained a stoic silence, not knowing how DMK supremo and Chief Minister M Karunanidhi will react to the incident in an election year.

The Dhandapani camp has filed a police complaint.

This is the first time such an incident has been reported in the state.

Dhandapani has charged the minister with attacking him and calling him names with casteist overtones.

The Race Course Road police have filed complaints under various sections of the Indian Penal Code. However, the Dhandapani camp says that they will press a further complaint under the Civil Rights Act, which makes casteist references punishable with a stiff jail term, preceded by a non-bailable arrest warrant.

Both sides are now looking up to Karunanidhi for deciding further action.

The trouble started over an 'innocuous' incident, but involves territorial rights and propriety in a cadre-based party like the DMK, where district party secretaries have the final say.

Dhanapani, peeved over the ministerial high-handedness of Palaniswamy, is now said to be upset over the minister issuing a statement for a three-day state-wide DMK agitation, to condemn rival AIADMK supremo Jayalalitha, for threatening to send Karunanidhi to prison, if returned to power.

What was aimed at the AIADMK has now caused acute embarrassment to the ruling party, with Dhandapani insisting that as Coimbatore urban district secretary, he alone was authorised to issue a similar statement. Palaniswamy, though a minister and secretary of the Coimbatore rural district unit, was still an 'outsider' in the urban district, he contended.

This is not the first time there has been such a flagrant violation, his camp followers claim.

The DMK leadership is all set to repair the damage to the party image caused by Dhandapani going public. It has sought out another minister, I Periaswamy, at whose room the altercation had taken place. The ministerial camp says that the leadership's 'misplaced sympathy' for Dhandapani had emboldened him to challenge Palaniswami, who should still come up in the order of precedence in party matters.

But the Dhandapani camp, which has been complaining about the minister's activities, some of which they claim could affect the party's poll prospects, want him out.

As a senior party leader, Dhandapani stood the chance of becoming a minister in the Karunanidhi Cabinet in 1996, but caste-based distribution of ministerial berths came in the way. The party had to sideline him for a while in the aftermath of the Coimbatore serial blasts in 1998, when he was seen as being politically sympathetic to Islamic fundamentalists charged with the killing of a police constable, Selvaraj.

Now, the question is whether the Karunanidhi leadership, which has not had the courage to carry out any major reshuffle in the state ministry for five years, will do it ahead of an election. For, if it were to start off, there may be demands for more.

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