The split that had haunted the AIADMK since the death of J Jayalalithaa finally turned real on Tuesday morning and with brutal symbolism. A large faction led by senior leaders S P Velumani and C Ve Shanmugham moved decisively toward extending support to Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) government and joining the Cabinet, effectively reducing AIADMK general secretary and former CM Edappadi K Palaniswami, or EPS as he is known, to a shrinking minority within the party he fought for nearly a decade to hold together. Announcing the split in Chennai on Tuesday morning, C Ve Shanmugham accused EPS of attempting to align with the DMK despite AIADMK’s decades-long political opposition to the party. “The AIADMK was founded to oppose the DMK. For five decades, we fought against them politically. But EPS proposed forming a government with the DMK’s support and sought our backing to make him Chief Minister. None of the MLAs agreed to that idea. We were shocked,” Shanmugham said.…