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Even as the war of words and mud-slinging rages on, the feud between Sasikala and former CM O Panneerselvam has now spilled over to social media. Supporters of OPS are distributing phone numbers and contact details of the MLAs online, asking people to build pressure on them to support him.
The AIADMK’s IT wing has been waging a battle with the OPS camp to put out the ‘authentic’ version of events that have unfolded in the past few days.
What was vexing for the IT wing was that one of its own had gone rogue. Hari Prabhakaran, one of the key members of the IT wing, had been actively pushing OPS’ cause on social media since the latter’s dramatic Tuesday night revolt.
By 10:53 pm on Tuesday night, Hari had tweeted that he supported OPS, and appealed to others in the party to do the same.
This tweet, and other later ones, reached a wide circle of social media users, and were shared and liked by hundreds of people. Soon, Hari was removed from the IT wing.
Among their many tweets and posts criticising Sasikala and showering praise on OPS, one of the disruptive tactics these OPS supporters came up with was to post the names and phone numbers of AIADMK MLAs. They urged the public to call their MLAs and express their support for OPS and their rejection of Sasikala.
Things came to a head on Wednesday afternoon, when the AIADMK finally sacked the head of its IT wing, Singai G Ramachandran, replacing him with VVR Raj Sathyan. Ramachandran was also removed from party membership for anti-party activities – reportedly for being present at an OPS press conference, and for retweeting tweets in support of OPS.
However, none of this has deterred the OPS camp online, and it seems that the AIADMK’s IT wing has generally been on the back foot in this fight. Indeed, the official social media team has been so badly hurt by unofficial OPS supporters that the official AIADMK Twitter handle had to remind social media users that the handle @CMOTamilNadu was not an official one.
That informal handle, together with handles of persons like Hari Prabhakaran, have been far more prolific in pushing information online, as against the official AIADMK handle, which put out just 12 tweets since OPS’s revolt.
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