The Madras high court on Wednesday declined to grant a total stay against the 10.5 per cent Vanniyar quota but held that admission in higher educational institutions and appointment in government services will be subject to the outcome of the batch of petitions challenging the same.
All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's Sasikala faction on Thursday said the presence of two leaves symbol, frozen by the Election Commission ahead of the April 12 RK Nagar assembly byelection, on its website was 'unnoticed' and would be removed.
'It may take the AIADMK much more convincing than already, not only to try and bring around even the one-time Muslim voters of the party. 'More importantly, the party leadership may find it even more difficult to convince traditional party voters and cadres, who had admired Jaya's nonchalance to the party and leader ruling the Centre,' says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Undisclosed income has been detected in respect of 10 assessee groups which included those linked to AIADMK leader V K Sasikala.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin's Cabinet, including him, would be 34-member strong and he has retained senior leaders like Duraimurugan and over a dozen shall be ministers for the first time.
The 12-MPs delegation, led by Rajya Sabha member V Maitreyan, submitted a memorandum in this regard to the President at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. In their memorandum, they sought steps for instituting a probe which can be a judicial inquiry or a CBI probe. It can be decided by the President, Maitreyan said after meeting Mukherjee.
Should the ruling AIADMK in Tamil Nadu not make the required five out of 22 by-election seats, or even otherwise, the temptation to poach, especially from the Congress or starting with the Congress may be high on Chief Minister Edappadi K Palanisami's agenda, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The DMK, AIADMK, PMK, BJP gear up for next May's assembly elections.
Never before in the history of the Republic has an election in the state mattered so much as it does now, observes Virendra Kapoor.
The sub-quota scheme may now lead to a ganging up of non-Vanniyars in individual constituencies against the Vanniyars just as in the past, such ganging up against SC-ST candidates was seen in the non-quota constituencies, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Trinamool Congress MP Derek O'Brien said the situation in Bihar is one of the reasons behind the Parliament session being cut short by the government.
The Dravida Munnetra Kazagham on Monday named two party nominees for the Rajya Sabha election and announced that the third seat was being allotted to ally Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.
There is no denying that the Deepa identity has overnight caught the people's imagination across the state. But converting that into an imagery and from there as support and vote-base is a different matter altogether, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
For a party that has adopted the successful social re-engineering model from Gujarat, Rajasthan and across the rest of the 'Hindi belt' over the past decades, Tamil Nadu continues to remain a tricky customer, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The judges, however, refused to issue notice to the Union home secretary, the first respondent, and Azhagiri, the eighth respondent in the PIL.
Indications are that Modi will have words of encouragement for Stalin, and the meeting is likely to be much less acrimonious than critics of either would want it to be. notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
A section of AIADMK MLAs owing allegiance to party General Secretary V K Sasikala on Friday dismissed media reports and allegations from the Panneerselvam camp that they were being "detained" at a resort near Chennai, and asserted that they were "free".
"Chinnamma has given valuable suggestions to Amma regarding party administration and also on governance. Like this, the list of traits of Chinnamma can go on," he said.
The twin announcements have virutally cleared the decks for the merger of the two factions.
The DMK has performed well in the general election and will get more seats than its rival, the AIADMK, in the by-elections. But this victory won' help them, reports A Ganesh Nadar/Rediff.com.
With the Apollo Hospitals chairman saying that she has recovered, the party can go back to business as usual.
"Have you obtained the permission of the Supreme Court (which had upheld the NEET). Would it not amount to violation of the ruling of the apex court?" were among the questions raised by the first bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy.
The BJP will be the obvious gainer while the DMK will lose a major chunk of its vote bank.
'There is no doubt that Sasikala wanted the transition to go this way.' 'The only thing the AIADMK MLAs want is to stay in power.'
Will just sit back and see, said Dinakaran over AIADMK merger.
The contemporary problem with the BJP in Tamil Nadu is that it has been trying hard to package the DMK especially as anti-god and anti-Hinduism, and seeking it to link to Periyar and M Karunanidhi, and by extension to Stalin, the latter's son and successor to the party mantle. Their hope was to consolidate the perceived 'pro-god, pro-religion votes', which they saw returning to the fold post-MGR, post-Jayalalithaa. But no such substantial vote-bank existed even in Periyar's time, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
While seven of the suspended MPs belonged to the TMC, six were from the DMK, three from the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, two from the Communist Party of India-Marxist and one from the Communist Party of India.
Stalin has given due respect to seniority in the pecking order, but has also taken into consideration the demands of individual ministries and the suitability of individuals, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Dinakaran recalled the difficulties faced by party workers in carrying forward their organisational work without a name.
The Tamil Nadu CM appealed people to vote for AIADMK in upcoming bypolls.
For the AIADMK's cadres, it is much more than an election symbol, they believe the party's electoral chances rest on owning it, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
R Rajagopalan, who travelled through Tamil Nadu, says it will be an election of many firsts.
The aftermath of Mani Ratnam's Ponniyin Selvan has led to an argument that there was no religion as Hinduism in Chola times.
Instead, there was only Saivism, Vaishnavism, etc, and that the Cholas were Saivites, and hence not Hindus, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
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.
Dinakaran met Sasikala for the first time after her loyalist E K Palaniswami won the vote of confidence in the Tamil Nadu Assembly on February 18.
Even without Shah's TN visit and the rest, the increasing bonhomie between the BJP and the AIADMK factions in the state have become more visible than ever in the post-Jaya era, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Delhi Police personnel, who were inside Dinakaran's house for about 20 minutes, declined to speak to the waiting media while leaving the premises.
However, the tilting factor still remains: Can the rivalling 'Modi brand' of 'soft Hindutva' and 'hard-sell nationalism' garner more votes for the NDA in Tamil Nadu, asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
The late chief minister was on and off ventilator and often also interacted after being admitted for fever and dehydration, Richard Beale told a news conference.
'Sasikala, already determined to keep both the party and CM's post for herself, might not be able to do it, if she were to wait any longer,' says N Sathiya Moorthy.
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