Expelled All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazahagm leader VK Sasikala on Tuesday arrived in Chennai, 23 hours after her departure from Bengaluru, where she had served a four year jail term in a corruption case and also underwent treatment for COVID-19.
'The alliance led by the DMK is starting with 15% votes while the AIADMK is starting from scratch.' 'Minority votes may be crucial'
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Friday sought a direction from the Madras high court to quash the Election Commission's order, directing covering of pictures of leaves, which resembled the 'Two Leaves' symbol of her party ruling All India Anna Dravida Munetra Kazhagam on small buses plying in the city.
Putting up a brave front, AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa on Sunday assured party workers that she will come out of the present case as she had successfully faced many challenges, saying her "public life amounted to swimming in a sea of inferno."
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.
Madras high court on Friday restrained the police from arresting the film's director A R Murugadoss till November 27.
A G Perarivalan alias Arivu is now a free man following a legal battle, and that long fight provides scope for throwback moments of Tamil sentiment that propelled the struggle which was backed by most political parties and successive governments in Tamil Nadu.
It does not stop here, though. According to field information, state ministers, AIADMK candidates and campaigners are asking BJP cadres accompanying them not to carry party flags at common rallies and also avoid their saffron shawl on those occasions. BJP cadres are also asked to stay out of the common campaign when it enters a minority-dominated areas, especially of Muslims, and re-join later, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
AIADMK coordinator and Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam was closeted with a section of leaders on Tuesday, skipping a meeting chaired by Chief Minister K Palaniswami on Covid-19, a day after the two crossed swords over who should lead the party in the 2021 assembly elections.
The party that shall head the alliance would be made known only during the elections and polls were not round the corner now, Chief Minister Palaniswami said when asked if the BJP or AIADMK would steward the combine in Tamil Nadu to fight the polls next year.
Implementing the poll promises of TN parties will cost state exchequer Rs 30,000 cr a year, say experts.
With this kind of coinage, the Opposition seems to be readily conceding the point that Modi is taller than all of them put together. So they need something bigger than themselves, collectively or not, to capture the voter imagination when it is about taking on Modi and the BJP in 2024, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Amusing spectacles unfold everyday with candidates attempting a variety of things from donning the role of a chef to washing clothes to woo voters, spicing up the campaign for the April 6 assembly polls in Tamil Nadu.
Springing a surprise, Vijayakanth-led Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam on Wednesday struck an alliance with the four-party People's Welfare Front for the May 16 Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu with the actor-turned-politician being declared as the chief ministerial candidate of the alliance.
It is not unlikely that ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP government comes up with more imaginative schemes aimed at constituency-building. The party under Modi's leadership has a more modern thinking in such matters unlike its rivals, which are still steeped only in ideology, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Followed by the BSP at Rs 698.33 crore and the Congress at Rs 588.16 crore.
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.
The NCP, AIADMK and a number of political parties have welcomed the joint proposal on agriculture presented to the WTO by a coalition of developing countries including India, China and 10 members of the Cairns group as a positive development.
With numbers on its side -- the ruling NDA has about half the votes of the electoral college -- and the possible support of fence-sitters like the BJD, the AIADMK and the YSRCP, the NDA candidate will likely sail through the contest.
The DMK's campaign appeared to be the most visible with propaganda at a feverish pace across the segment for the April 6 assembly polls and Stalin is the party's chief minister candidate.
Stalin said that even in Gujarat the vice-chancellors are not appointed by the governor but the State.
'This is the real purpose behind the arrest, and it is not about controlling corruption.' 'It is like taking Amit Shah into custody before the 2024 elections.' 'How will it affect the BJP's election machinery?'
Anti-Congress regional parties may have felt the possible impact of Rahul's South-North yatra, pending a second East-West padayatra, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Nine hundred and forty-seven people are said to have died in grief after J Jayalalithaa's demise on December 5. But how true is this claim?
While Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has made his national ambitions amply clear, even rechristening his party to aid the process, his Tamil Nadu counterpart M K Stalin insists he is already in the national scene and used his birthday rally on March 1 to not only strongly pitch for the Congress as a force to reckon with in the efforts to dislodge the Narendra Modi-led dispensation at the Centre, but also sought to shoot down the prospects of a Third Front.
The Congress MP from Sivaganga also slammed the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance and said the people of Tamil Nadu do not want a government which has any "stain, scent or shadow" of the BJP as its 'Hindi-Hindutva' agenda "irritates" them.
Ending its decade long stint in the opposition, even relegated to the third spot in the House in 2011, the M K Stalin-led Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made a spirited comeback to the ruling saddle to unseat its rival the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.
'The last four years was not Dravidian rule, it was BJP rule by proxy.'
The BJP continuing to look at the Dravidian polity through the religious prism has not worked in Tamil Nadu whereas it has yielded political and electoral results across much of the rest of the country, observes 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.
'OPS did not back off.' 'He wanted transparency and he got it.'
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 Karnataka government is divided over filing an appeal in the Supreme Court against the acquittal of former Tamil Nadu chief minister. N Sathiya Moorthy analyses the possibilities
'The BJP think they are running an ideology machine in this country, and they have to convert everyone, from people to parties to party leaders.'
Back of the envelope calculations put government expense on each of the new schemes promised by the DMK and the AIADMK at tens of thousands of crores. But then, neither party has said how they are going to also address the mounting debt burden either, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on Monday opposed in Rajya Sabha the government move to put in place a single examination for medical and dental courses through National Eligibility cum Entrance Test
Stalin is preparing the DMK to go the whole hog in making 'federalism', 'Tamil self-respect' and 'communal cohesiveness' the party's poll plank next year, and package the BJP and its possible allies, as 'divisive' and 'reactionary', predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
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