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N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras
In a move that was not wholly unexpected, the Pattali Makkal Katchi pulled out on Friday of the ruling alliance in Tamil Nadu led by the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.
"The party executive will soon meet on rejoining the BJP-led NDA [National Democratic Alliance]," PMK founder S Ramadoss said at his farmhouse near his native Villupuram on Friday.
Ramadoss said he had been pushed into quitting the alliance by the shoddy treatment meted out to him by the AIADMK.
Ramadoss was made to wait for more than an hour when he wanted to meet Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa last week before her predecessor M Karunanidhi's arrest.
The PMK was also denied the chief minister's post in the Union territory of Pondicherry even though Ramadoss had made that a condition for joining the AIADMK-led alliance after pulling out of the NDA and asking his two ministers at the Centre to quit before the assembly election in May.
Earlier this week, Dr Ramadoss had created a flutter by visiting Karunanidhi in jail.
The PMK is also said to be talking to dalit parties in the state to sink their traditional differences so that the Dravidian parties do not play them against each other.
The PMK has five MPs and 20 MLAs and will have a crucial role to play in the local body elections in October.
Dr Ramadoss is now reportedly keen on having his son Dr Andumani, who was eyeing the chief minister's post in Pondy, made a Union minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.
Jayalalithaa's government will, however, not be affected by this development as the AIADMK has 135 legislators in a house of 234.
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