By-polls were announced at the RK Nagar constituency which was vacated due to Jayalalithaa's death. But, the election commission canceled the by-polls after evidence of large-scale bribing by the ruling AIADMK (AMMA) surfaced. On 17 April 2017, Delhi police registered a case against Dhinakaran who was also the candidate for AIADMK (AMMA) for the by-poll at RK Nagar regarding an allegation of attempting to bribe the Election Commission of India (ECI) for the AIADMK's election symbol. However the Tis Hazari Special Court granted him bail on the grounds that the police failed to identify the public official allegedly bribed. T.T.V. Dhinakaran started his party work on 5 August 2017. However, the chief minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami had a fallout with Dhinakaran and announced that the appointment of T.T.V. Dinakaran as deputy general secretary was invalid. So T.T.V. Dhinakaran claims that's " We are the real AIADMK and 95% of its cadres are with us ".