The Uncertain Future Of AIADMK Politics

With Sasikala’s arrest and the AIADMK divided into warring camps, all eyes are on the contest between Panneerselvam and Palanisamy.

- Amarnath K. Menon

For over a week, Tamil Nadu Governor Chennamaneni Vidyasagar Rao waited, refusing to act on All India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) general secretary V.K. Sasikala’s demand that she be sworn in as chief minister. In hindsight, the decision was a good one, for, on February 14, Supreme Court judges Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Amitava Roy delivered their verdict in a 21-year-old case of disproportionate assets against Sasikala and the AIADMK’s late leader J. Jayalalithaa. Upholding the trial court’s conviction order of September 27, 2014, Sasikala and two of her family members were found guilty and sentenced to jail, shattering whatever succession plans she had for the AIADMK.

A day later, Sasikala surrendered before a special court within Bengaluru’s Parappana Agrahara jail, her home for the next four years. The intervening hours before she left for Bengaluru were spent in the company of party legislators and loyalists at the Golden Bay Resort at Koovathur, some 80 km from Chennai (where they were cooped up since interim chief minister O. Panneerselvam’s rebellion). Sasikala was showing little signs of relenting or remorse. In a desperate bid to hold on to the party reins, even by remote, she expelled OPS (as Panneerselvam is commonly known) and 19 other leaders of his faction from the party and named Edappadi K. Palanisamy leader of the legislature party and chief ministerial candidate. Sasikala also re-inducted two others into the party—nephew T.V.V. Dinakaran (as deputy general secretary) and her brother’s son-in-law S. Venkatesh, who had been expelled by Jayalalithaa in 2011—stunning the AIADMK cadre in the process.