The race between the top two leaders to win the post of Tamil Nadu Opposition Leader has fueled tensions in the ADMK party as the emergence of the fresh tussle between the two had displayed the development that the party is moving close towards a long-lasting split. The party has been pushed to witness flawed leadership over leading the front in the assembly as an opposition.

The ADMK alliance had faced an unprecedented debacle in the recently-held Tamil Nadu assembly poll. MK Stalin-led DMK has secured a landslide victory that was made possible by the prevalence of the anti-incumbency wave against the ADMK government. As the voters had rejected another five-year mandate for Edappadi Palaniswami to lead the state as the Chief Minister, he is now locking horns with his party colleague O Panneerselvam to become the state opposition leader.

On Friday, hours after MK Stalin was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, the ADMK has convened a meeting at the party's headquarters in Chennai in the evening hours of Friday to elect the Opposition Leader in the assembly. While the DMK alliance had won 159 seats, the ADMK alliance had won 75 seats of which 66 were won by ADMK alone. As the party has finished the race second, it will be entering the assembly as the Opposition. 

While Edappadi Palaniswami had come to the meeting with the aim of winning the race, O Panneerselvam had made up his mind that he is not going to lose his stake this time. In what had apparently displayed the tussle, the supporters of both the leaders had involved in a war of words and brawls as they sowed the fresh seed of tension. The visuals from the party office had shown that the supporters of both the leaders had held arguments with their opposite group and demanded that the party must lead by a single leadership. 

While the supporters involved in a tussle, the top leaders of the party had held a closed-room discussion before going to the meeting, that was participated by the newly elected ADMK MLAs. The senior leaders including Edappadi Palaniswami, Panneerselvam, D Jayakumar, Thangamani, and SP Velumani had taken part in the discussion. According to reports, there were instances of a tussle between both the leaders.

The leaders had then met the newly-elected MLAs to decide on who will be the Opposition leader and who will be the whip in the assembly. The meeting had lasted for over thirty minutes and it had eventually concluded without reaching a consensus on who will become the Opposition leader. The party has said that the meeting with the MLAs will again be conducted on Monday - May 10. Post the meeting, senior leader and former minister D Jayakumar had maintained that a unanimous decision would be reached on who will become the Leader of Opposition. 

However, the reports had revealed that Panneerselvam had blamed Edappadi Palanswami directly for the party's defeat in the assembly polls to strengthen his voice to claim the post of the Opposition leader. He further said that the party has lost major seats in Southern Tamil Nadu due to Edappadi Palaniswami's decision of providing reservation for the Vanniyar community. On the other hand, Edappadi Palaniswami is not willing to give up the post of the Opposition leader and he is citing his victory in a huge margin in the polls to power up his claim to become the Opposition leader. 

Panneerselvam has vowed to take over the post by claiming that he had fought a tough race in the elections. Edappadi Palaniswami has contested in the Edappadi Constituency in the polls and he took on DMK's newbie Sampath Kumar while O Panneerselvam had taken on his strong foe DMK's Thanga Tamilselvan. Palaniswami had won and retained the Edappadi Constituency comfortably by defeating DMK's Sampath Kumar by the margin of over 60,000 votes, but this was not the case of Panneerselvam as he won in a razor-thin margin.

When tensions escalate between the two leaders in ADMK, BJP mulls to come to the picture of electing the Opposition Leader under the guise of being in the ADMK alliance. The sources say it may take more days for ADMK to reach a consensus in finalizing the Opposition leader. It must be noted that after the meeting, the leaders have visited Jayalalithaa's memorial in Chennai, and even at the memorial, the supporters of both leaders were involved in what was close to a quarrel. They chanted in support of their respective leaders to keep their allegiance, displaying that the party could soon collapse.