After a faction of AIADMK leaders voted for , party general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami on Wednesday removed SP Velumani, C Ve Shanmugam and C Vijayabaskar from their party posts.
Natham R Viswanathan was also relived of his party responsibility after these leaders and voted in favour of the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) government during the confidence motion in the Assembly earlier in the day.
Palaniswami replaced the party posts of the 25 MLAs and appointed new district secretaries in their places.
What happened in Assembly
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and TVK founder C Joseph Vijay breathed easy on Wednesday after comfortably winning the trust vote. The movie star-turned-politician had a tough time getting invitation from the Governor after a blockbuster debut where his party emerged as the single-largest in the state with 108 seats, demolishing the binary of DMK and AIADMK.
He was asked to prove that he had the support of 118 MLAs, the half-way mark in the Tamil Nadu Assembly but failed do so for nearly a week. But on Wednesday, he coasted through with the support of 144 MLAs, after a week of intense negotiations that rewrote many a political arithmetic.
On its way to forming government, a split also emerged within the AIADMK.
The confidence motion moved by Vijay in the 234-member House saw the support of 25 rebel AIADMK legislators.
The final breakdown of the 144 votes in favour included TVK’s own MLAs and those of the Congress, CPI, CPI(M), VCK, IUML. Also in tow were expelled AMMK MLA S Kamaraj, and 25 rebel AIADMK legislators led by former ministers S P Velumani and C Ve Shanmugam.
Nearly 22 legislators voted against the motion while five abstained after the DMK staged a walkout before the voting began.
