Tamil Nadu Governor Vidyasagar Rao is understood to have made it clear that he will await the judgement of the Supreme Court in disproportionate assets case against All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam General Secretary V K Sasikala before taking any decision on the issue of chief ministership, TV channels reported on Friday.
K Pandiarajan has filed a petition in the apex court in which he has sought a direction for quashing Speaker P Dhanapal's decision rejecting the demand for a secret ballot to determine the outcome of the floor test.
The pleas were mentioned for urgent listing before the bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra.
The BJP has to endorse chief minister K Palaniswami's candidature for the CM's post for the polls and agree to its other terms -- like non-participation in government -- and if not, should rethink of its 2021 electoral options, the AIADMK indicated at its meet.
The mass Jallikattu protests on Chennai's Marina beach showed no sign of dying out on Friday, even after Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O Panneerselvam promised that a draft ordinance aimed at ensuring the conduct of the traditional bull-taming sport has been submitted to the home ministry.
The legislators moved out of the resort as it was already booked for the weekend, sources said.
The big question is: Will her release be a threat to Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami? The answer is, while it may give him moments of nervousness, he will not be replaced, say political experts. T E Narasimhan reports.
'No one was allowed to meet Jaya. Whoever came, would be briefed by Sasikala's relatives that she was 'all right',' Dindigul Srinivasan said.
OPS has impressed Chennai residents by his astute, on the scene, handling of the Cyclone Vardah aftermath.
Days after his outburst against AMMK leader T T V Dhinakaran, close aide Thanga Tamilselvan on Friday joined the DMK in the presence of its chief M K Stalin. He is the second top Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam leader after V Senthil Balaji to join the principal opposition party in Tamil Nadu.
Party spokesperson said while Jaya was the "conscience" of her mentor M G Ramachandran, Sasikala was, likewise, her "conscience."
If Sasikala wants to stay in active politics, she will have to go to EPS crawling, reports Aditi Phadnis.
In his first poll rally for the April 6 assembly polls, Modi rooted for the Tamil language, culture and invoked the welfare legacies of M G Ramachandran and J Jayalalithaa, late chief ministers and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam icons.
On the face of it, the first round has gone to Edappadi K Palaniswami. Not only has he been named chief ministerial candidate, that too by his one-time bete noire Panneerselvam, he also gets one member more in the steering committee than OPS. He can now hope to wean away one or more members of the OPS team in the steering committee just as he had done with other leaders in the latter's camp, post-reunification. That was also OPS's concern, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Hindutva social media continues to present the DMK especially as anti-god, anti-Hindu and anti-Brahmin. The strategy did not work in the past, it has not worked in the present, and would not work in the future, as a massive vote-getter, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Governor Banwarilal Purohit administered the oath of office and secrecy to 68-year old Stalin, for whom this would be the first stint as CM
'The BJP has become a reasonably larger force in Tamil Nadu in the last two years.'
From being the third largest party in the outgoing Lok Sabha with 37 seats, the AIADMK has to now contend with single digit tally, pushed to the third spot behind arch rival DMK and Congress despite fighting the polls as part of a "mega alliance" with parties, including the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Rescuers have been engaged in digging another borewell since Sunday to reach an appropriate depth to get to the boy and now a heavy drilling machine of German make has been deployed to expedite the efforts.
It will be the year of preparation for the electoral test in Uttar Pradesh, due in 2022. But before that, the West Bengal Assembly election will set the mood for the rest of 2021.
State Finance Minister D Jayakumar said such "politics of opportunism" will not succeed.
Among the names being mentioned for inclusion as ministers are Tejasvi Surya, the 29-year-old MP from Bangalore South, Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, the 35-year-old MP from Ladakh, Locket Chatterjee, the 45-year old MP from Hooghly, and Dilip Ghosh, MP from West Medinipur and president of the BJP's West Bengal unit.
Sasikala left Chennai on Thursday morning by a car which had to halt at several locations till it reached the Bengaluru highway as party cadres gathered to greet her.
'Tamil Nadu will never allow the Centre's three-language policy'
If not for Palaniswami, it is hard to guess if the AIADMK would have been able to garner 33.3 per cent vote share as against the DMK's 37.7 per cent. AIADMK won 66 seats, its allies Pattali Makkal Katchi and Bharatiya Janata Party five and four seats respectively and proved yet again that the western region was its fortress.
V K Sasikala, late J Jayalalithaa's confidante would return to Tamil Nadu on February 7 from Bengaluru and a grand welcome from party cadres awaited her right from the state's border, Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary T T V Dinakaran said in Madurai on Wednesday.
The video recording of the House proceedings on February 18 must be from the commencement till the end, the court said.
Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu are centred on chief ministerial candidates of rival parties. When Sasikala cannot contest even a panchayat election for six years after her release, even if she were to have sympathetic backers even among apolitical voters, she does not have any 'transferrable vote-bank' even otherwise for a chief minister candidate of her choice, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
With no solution in sight for government formation in Tamil Nadu, the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam has asserted that a majority of its MLAs are behind General Secretary V K Sasikala
'Both are mature enough to realise that a break will not benefit either of them and both will be losers'
A group of 26 fishermen, 24 from Tamil Nadu and one each from Yanam and Kerala have been detained by Bangladeshi authorities and an appeal to bring them back has been made to the state and Union governments, an NGO for fishermen welfare has said.
In separate letters to the two banks, located at Mylapore area, he said that under the relevant party laws, he continued to be the AIADMK treasurer.
'The trust vote would have been closer had the DMK not been expelled,' O Panneerselvam tells A Ganesh Nadar at the launch of an e-learning portal in Jayalalithaa's name.
President Ram Nath Kovind administered the oath of office and secrecy to Naidu.
OPS said Jayalalithaa had turned the AIADMK into 'an iron fortress which cannot be shaken by anyone'.
'While appreciating the cultural significance of Jallikattu, the PM observed that the matter is presently sub judice,' the PMO tweeted.
Dinakaran had alleged on Friday that Panneerselvam met him in July last year and wanted to meet him again in September-end this year in a bid to "oust" Chief Minister M Palaniswami. He also claimed that Panneerselvam offered to make him the chief minister.
A portion of the 15-foot tall private compound wall, totally wet due to heavy rains lashing the area for the past few days, fell on the adjoining tiled-roof houses in Nadur village.
"List it for hearing on Thursday," said the bench, which also comprised Justice B R Gavai and Justice Surya Kant.
It is increasingly clear that for the BJP to try and establish itself as an electoral force in Tamil Nadu, the party has to come out of the old Brahminical mould, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.