Sharply departing from the organisational structure the party had in the two years since it parted company with the Congress, TMC president G K Moopanar in a significant move announced early this week the formation of a PAC that will henceforth be the highest decision-making body of the party.

The super structure created to enable him to react to events with much more efficacy and efficiency, is likely to function on the lines of the politburo of the Communist parties.

What prompted Moopanar to go in for a compact PAC with nine members (including himself) as against the 24-member executive, which over a period of two years appeared to have become unwieldy,can be gauged if the events since the Lok Sabha elections are reconstructed.

"Why did the party fare badly," was the loud and clear question every one in the party asked and attempted to answer. Between April 10 and 18, Moopanar had long question and answer sessions with the district-level activists, on whose inputs, he said, he relied heavily.

It was believed that two issues dominated the proceedings of the interaction. One was the political strategy the DMK-TMC combine adopted at the hustings, which was believed to have led to the poor performance of the TMC candidates. Another was the post-poll scenario which compelled the party to go for a thorough and ruthless overhaul of the party organisation.

In the previous party executive hierarchy, which resigned en masse on March 21 accepting responsibility for the poll debacle, the general secretaries occupied the vantage positions immediately below the party president. After the revamp, the PAC, which has been designated to take all important politicaldecisions, stands between the president and the executive, filling a perceived vacuum, as Moopanar sought to describe it.

Interestingly, the composition of the PAC speaks for itself. Among others former Union Finance Ministers P Chidambaram, M Arunachalam, S R Balasubramaniam, R Dhanushkodi Adithan, Jayanthi Natarajan and leader of Opposition in the State Assembly S Balakrishnan are in the PAC to help Moopanar take crucial decisions swiftly so as to make the desired political impact.

Why Moopanar chose to offer to resign on March 30 as party president still remains unclear. All hell broke loose in party circles for two days until he withdrew his offer at the executive meeting held at Thanjavur. Moopanar's offer, it is learnt, might have been part of the strategy he devised to put in place some doubting Thomases.

The revamp has also to be viewed in the backdrop of yet another significant move unveiled by Moopanar early this week to co-ordinate with the Congress. Moopanar, who had a 30-minute discussionwith Congress president Sonia Gandhi at her residence on May 4, appears to have restructured the organisation with a view to face the challenges in the months to come.

Quota demand for women

TMC leaders P Chidambaram and S Peter Alphonse on Friday morning met Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee at his New Delhi residence, and reiterated the TMC's demand to introduce in the Lok Sabha the bill for 33 per cent reservation of Parliament and State legislature seats for women.

The TMC leaders, besides discussing some of the bills to be introduced in the session that begins this month end, also raised some important problems facing Tamil Nadu. According to a press release, the two MPs impressed upon the Prime Minister the need to consider bills on the revival of the Legislative Council in Tamil Nadu, electoral reforms, delimitation of Constituencies, Lok Pal and Prasar Bharati.