He was trained in Lebanon and later in Syria under the Palestinian nationalist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

[citation needed] After a bitter rivalry with Velupillai Prabhakaran, Uma Maheswaran left the LTTE in 1980 and formed PLOTE.

[citation needed] In late 1988, an attempted coup to overthrow the Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's government in Maldives with the help of mercenaries from PLOTE was foiled with assistance from the Indian Army and Navy.

In the meantime, on May 23, 1982 Sivaneswaran (alias Niranjan), an accomplice of Mukundan, was also arrested at Saidapet, Madras and an unlicensed revolver seized from him.

it is functioning under the leadership of D. Siddarthan and is a pro-government minor political party that is alleged to cooperate with the Sri Lankan military against LTTE sympathizers.

A prominent former PLOTE and later paramilitary leader Manika Dasan was killed by the LTTE in a claymore bomb attack in the town of Vavuniya.

[citation needed] Another paramilitary leader from the Batticlao region, Plote Mohan, was killed by LTTE assassins in Colombo in 2004.