Rocky Reunion

An alliance nudged along by the BJP may not be enough to save the AIADMK.

- Amarnath K. Menon

Flashing toothy smiles, Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami (EPS) and his predecessor O. Panneerselvam (OPS) shook hands quite vigorously at the AIADMK party headquarters in Chennai to leave no doubt that they had come together. It was a bitter break, after all. It signalled a rapprochement that the warring EPS’s AIADMK (Amma) and OPS’s AIADMK (Puratchi Thalaivi Amma) factions knew they could not avoid. The glue that cemented the alliance: ruling Tamil Nadu as the AIADMK had been mandated to when ‘supreme leader’ J. Jayalalithaa was elected in May 2016—before the party was thrown into disarray with her death in December last.

On August 21, more than six-and a-half months after they parted ways, the two joined hands while keeping out the third AIADMK faction—the one associated with the ‘Mannargudi clan’ of incarcerated interim general secretary (GS) V.K. Sasikala and her relatives, including nephew T.T.V. Dhinakaran whom she appointed deputy GS. Outwardly, what brought the first two together was EPS conceding to OPS’s demands for a judicial inquiry into the circumstances leading to Jayalalithaa’s death and turning her Poes Garden home into a public memorial. They also reached an understanding on the other demand—the vexing issue of sidelining Sasikala—by initiating due process to expel her from the AIADMK and to marginalise the Mannargudi clan.