The opposition AIADMK is on the course of taking legal recourse against the Directorate of Vigilance and Crime Branch (DVAC) raids conducted at 21 places related to the former state transport minister and party leader, M.R. Vijayabhaskar.

The raids were conducted on Thursday.

AIADMK coordinator and former Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam said that the party would fight the raids legally and that the raids were part of political vendetta by the M.K. Stalin government against them.

As the raids were being carried out in different locations linked to Vijayabhaskar at Chennai and Karur, the AIADMK frontline leadership including Panneerselvam and K. Palaniswami met and decided that the party would fight the raids legally and politically.

Panneerselvam in a statement released on Thursday said that the raids were aimed at creating a fear psychosis among the opponent political leadership and added that the AIADMK is a political party that cannot be cowed down by such ‘flimsy threats using police and other agencies.

The AIADMK leadership has also decided that they would fight it out politically. The party leadership has already communicated to all the district secretaries of the state and has asked them to conduct campaigns at the grassroots levels against the vendetta politics being carried out by the DMK leadership and especially the Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, said the statement.

Panneerselvam in the statement said that the DMK government and Chief Minister M.K. Stalin resorted to tactics of intimidation as they were not able to counter AIADMK politically.

He said, “DMK government should stop such acts of political vendetta and they would become a laughing stock among the people of Tamil Nadu due to such threats and politics of intimidation.”

The AIADMK leadership will also be calling a virtual meeting of the party’s state office-bearers and district secretaries on the future course of action on the possibilities of the DMK government unleashing DVAC against its top brass who were in power during the previous government’s period.

Arunachalam Venkitaraman, a social activist and Director of People’s Foundation, an NGO working for social justice and Dravidian movement based out of Tirunelveli while speaking to IANS said, “The Dravidian politics has now lowered into one of vendetta politics.”

He added, “We thought that the politics would have refined and reformed after the days of Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa, and Stalin was trying to bring up a name for himself by inviting opposition in the committees constituted by the government to counter Covid -19. However, the old fangs have come out and Stalin has shown his real self. Dravidian politics was not conceived to be in this manner and the end has to come to politics of vendetta.”