The by-elections to 18 assembly constituencies will decide if the ruling AIADMK remains in power or not.
'The last four years was not Dravidian rule, it was BJP rule by proxy.'
'When you enter our secretariat, you are insulting us.' 'It is the seat of government of the state of Tamil Nadu,'
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.
Jayalalithaa's nephew Deepak Jayakumar claimed that the late AIADMK chief had left behind her properties to him and his sister.
The Chief Minister Palaniswami camp, however, blamed the Sasikala family for the raids.
'More than 90 per cent of the party cadres are with OPS.'
Sasikala's comments came after Panneerselvam alleged that he was told to quit the chief minister's post to protect party's discipline and failure to follow would be a violation of party discipline
OPS said Jayalalithaa had turned the AIADMK into 'an iron fortress which cannot be shaken by anyone'.
'OPS did not back off.' 'He wanted transparency and he got it.'
Tamil Nadu's politics returns to being bi-polar, and that's a good thing, says B Srikumar.
The young woman's death has led to an outrage on illegal hoardings being put by political parties despite them causing inconvenience and posing a threat to people's safety.
Palaniswami, Tamil Nadu's new CM was among the senior ministers who had proximity to Jayalalithaa.
The threat to Sasikala won't come from the Tamil Nadu chief minister or New Delhi, but from her 20-plus kin, reports R Rajagopalan.
For Prime Minister Narendra Modi to dig up the perceived past of the DMK rival, now under a new leader in M K Stalin, may not gel with the voters, both old and new. If they are still going to vote for the AIADMK-BJP combine, it will be for entirely different reasons, and despite Modi's poll speeches, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
On Tuesday night, the Tamil Nadu chief minister decides that enough is enough, and throws a challenge to Chinnamma.
MK Stalin's ruling AIDMK rival does not thankfully face such problems as he did, but its problems could be worse if saner counsel does not prevail between now and the assembly polls, warns N Sathiya Moorthy.
Dinakaran has been re-inducted and elevated to the position of deputy general secretary.
ndependent of the political fallout, which Stalin has sought to arrest through the withdrawal of the measures as fast as they were introduced, there are concerns about the way those decisions came to be taken, without adequate application of mind, not in official terms but in political and electoral contexts, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The sidelined leader's victory is being seen as a worrying development both for AIADMK and principal opposition Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which finished third behind the ruling party.
TTV Dhinakaran's call to the Congress to break up with the DMK and tie up with him, is aimed at consolidating the traditional anti-BJP votes. The stronger message is to all anti-BJP constituencies in the state, especially the minorities and traditionally aligned sections of the Dalit community, that he could be trusted to take forward an 'anti-Hindutva' agenda more seriously than anyone else, the DMK included, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Stalin owes his victory this time, like in 2019, to the hate-campaign of the local Hindutva forces, which kept haranguing him, and even his dead father, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
In one village, a woman asks, "They are always showing cash seizures on television, you think some of it will escape and we will get money as usual?" "Only 1 percent of cash is actually seized, the rest has arrived, you don't worry," a party worker assures her. Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar reports on the election in the southern-most tip of the country.
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.
One more person died on Wednesday in an act of suicide after being apparently upset over Jayalalithaa's conviction in the disproportionate asset case as protests against her conviction continued across the state for the fifth day.
At 70, going by hospital records made public, most age and health-related arguments put out against super-star Rajinikanth's entry into politics, before he withdrew citing a 2016 kidney-transplant, hold good for Sasikala, too, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Good intentions and elaborate roadmaps apart, there is an urgent need for the Tamil Nadu chief minister to come up with branded schemes like MGR's meal scheme, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
"We will work together jointly as two hands of AIADMK in future for the people of Tamil Nadu. He asked for justice. I too ask the same," Deepa told reporters.
Rajinikanth will announce his decision by the end of this month through a video message on his Twitter handle.
Dr Vasudevan Maitreyan, was virtually the face of the AIADMK in New Delhi since February 2002, finds himself ignored by the current leadership.
The going is not going to be easy for the DMK and its allies in Elections 2024. Despite the seats sweepstake in the 2021 assembly polls, the vote-share difference of 5.6% (DMK's 45.38% versus AIADMK-BJP's 39.72%) is not insurmountable on a bad day, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
With the Apollo Hospitals chairman saying that she has recovered, the party can go back to business as usual.
Tamil Nadu Governor R N Ravi on Thursday staged an unprecedented walkout from the state assembly following a face-off with Chief Minister M K Stalin over the former's customary address to members of the house in its first session of the year.
His remarks came a day after the opposition led by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam called for a CBI probe into the treatment and death of the former chief minister.
We (the AIADMK government) are going to implement the programmes initiated by Amma (Jayalalithaa) in our remaining term of four-and-a-half-years. "Now a stable government is in place in the state. You will see a new era of development to realise the dreams of Amma under the guidance of Chinnamma (Sasikala)," he said.
We don't have confidence in the chief minister, the MLAs said.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi's daughter Selvi is sweating it out in Thiruvarur, seeking votes for her father. Despite odds stacked up against him, her father's AIADMK rival K M Rajendran is confident about causing an upset in the DMK chief's hometown. Saisuresh Sivaswamy reports from Thiruvarur.
Panneerselvam also alleged that by shedding crocodile tears, Sasikala kept the MLAs on her side.
The Tamil Nadu Assembly on Friday passed a bill providing internal reservation of 10.5 per cent for Vanniyars, a most backward community in government jobs and in admission to educational institutions.
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.
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