From planting seedlings to holding feasts and shutting down 500 liquor shops, Tamil Nadu government is going all out to uphold Jayalalithaa's fame on her 69th birth anniversary.
'They are going to be clubbed with the Lok Sabha elections which are six months away.' 'These people who are ruling Tamil Nadu know very well that they cannot win another election.'
The Enforcement Directorate has registered a money laundering case against All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-Amma leader TTV Dinakaran and others in connection with the Election Commission bribery case.
Special Judge Poonam Chaudhry sent Dinakaran and his aide Mallikarjuna to Tihar Jail till May 15 after the police said that the accused were not needed for custodial interrogation.
After 47 years in electoral politics, Union minister Sharad Pawar on Monday became a member of the Rajya Sabha for the first time.
But not for too long, as TTV Dinakaran can still play spoilsport, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The high court verdict on AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa's disproportionate assets conviction appeal just got delayed, says N Sathiya Moorthy
But the question before the leadership will be whether to retain the BJP alliance or dump it, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Stalin disapproved of the act of some his party legislators sitting in the chair of Speaker P Dhanapal in the assembly.
Congress' chances of survival in the state do not look promising, says Aditi Phadnis
R Rajagopalan on why September promises to be a crucial month for Tamil Nadu.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa was on Saturday convicted and sentenced to four years jail in an 18-year-old corruption case in a judgment that will unseat her from the post, disqualified her immediately as an MLA and can impact the Assembly elections due in 18 months.
The 'AIADMK symbol issue' may be a fit case for the courts and the legislature to provide for a new law for application in similar fluid, dynamic political situations, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Second-line AIADMK leaders and cadres alike say that by starting the talks first with the BJP and committing the party to an alliance without discussing seat-sharing, the leadership might have commenced the coalition discourse at the wrong end. According to them, even 20 seats for the BJP may be too many, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
She faced intense and protracted struggle to eventually head the AIADMK.
At a time when the AIADMK has chosen the late Jaya's personal aide to lead the party, M K Stalin re-enters the scene with greater credibility and better clarity of his own role in the DMK, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'The prime minister's advisers might have told him that going along with this AIADMK government will damage his image.'
Dinakaran said how could he flee the country when his passport 'is in court' for 20 years.
Following are the names of some high-profile people who have been put behind the bars
The Supreme Court on Monday sought response from Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and three others on appeals filed against Karnataka high court order acquitting them in a disproportionate assets case.
The Karnataka high court on Monday directed Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy to make written submissions on March 11 in former Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa's appeal against her conviction in the disproportionate assets case.
In private, AIADMK spokespersons say that the raid on Chief Secretary P Ramamohana Rao might be aimed at weakening the AIADMK, and demotivating the party from selecting/electing Jayalalithaa's confidante, Sasikala Natarajan, as her successor -- first as party head then possibly in the government, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Venugopal told the court that he had given legal opinion to the AIADMK faction led by Panneerselvam.
By getting the Tamil Nadu assembly to act on his very imaginative public declaration to keep petro-chemical industries out of the Cauvery delta, which has traditionally been a DMK stronghold, Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami has not only set the ball rolling for the assembly elections due a year later but also sent out a strong message to the BJP government at the Centre, which took a unilateral decision to exempt petro-complexes from environmental clearance, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Though EPS has sworn peace for now, or so it seems, his camp is said to be considering the possibility of calling an early meeting of the party's general council, to get a mandate in his favour before things went out of control. Ground-level indications are that OPS had lost his limited base, which alone had forced him to patch up with the other, reportedly at the instance of the BJP ally at the Centre, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
If either faction of the AIADMK failed to muster a floor majority, then the governor would be called upon to ask MK Stalin as the leader of the opposition if he would like to try his hand at government formation.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday vacated the stay on trial proceedings against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa in a disproportionate assets case.
'Votes-for-notes no longer only means cash and goodies for fence-sitting voters,' points out Sunil Sethi.
'Appointed, sponsored and nurtured' by Jayalalithaa, P Rama Mohana Rao is now seen as a man who holds the key to the secrets of ministers and bureaucrats.
'We spoke of everything but politics.' 'She was well-versed in the Eng. Lit. canon of Dickens and Austen, but had also read Oscar Wilde's famous epistolary tract from jail, De Profundis.' Sunil Sethi recalls his memorable encounters with Jayalalithaa.
Days after its inauguration, officials on Wednesday demolished the compound wall and removed a park at the Mullivaaikal Memorial, built in honour of Tamil martyrs in the war in Sri Lanka, alleging that these were constructed on encroached highway land, triggering instant protests by pro-Eelam activists.
If the DMK under Stalin is unable to do well in the Lok Sabha elections, his personal and political standing in the party will be threatened. But if the party does well, Stalin is the next kingmaker to watch out for. T E Narasimhan and Aditi Phadnis report.
A day after their party supremo and Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa was convicted and sentenced in the Rs 66.65 crore illegal asset case, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MLAs are likely to meet here on Sunday to propose a candidate for the chief minister's post.
'Sasikala went to jail in a 19-year-old case.' 'Dinakaran went to jail in a case of attempting to bribe the Election Commission.' 'How can you link the BJP to these two cases?'
'Whenever a new film of his releases, he uses politics to hype his film.' 'Her party can manage for a short period without Jayalalithaa as the chief minister but if her absence is for a long term, the AIADMK will start crumbling and disintegrating.' 'What keeps the DMK going despite its corrupt image is it is a democratic party in comparison to the AIADMK... Also, many social welfare measures in Tamil Nadu were brought in by the DMK. So they do have a place in the political scene despite corruption.' Gnani Sankaran, the well-known political analyst, discusses the fallout of Jayalalithaa's conviction on Tamil Nadu politics with Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com
"The result of the RK Nagar bypoll is an outcome of the tacit understanding between DMK working president M K Stalin and Dinakaran," Panneerselvam and Palaniswami said in a joint statement on Sunday night.
'Having learnt her lesson in popular democracy, Jaya would become more populist than the DMK and more so than the imagery that mentor MGR had created in the Tamil voter's mind, both as an individual and as an elected ruler.'
The Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagham leader is set to embark on a series of protests covering the Cauvery basin regions of Tamil Nadu beginning Saturday.
Contest on their own and get washed out, as happened in the 2016 assembly elections? Or contest in league with one of the Dravidian majors and get submerged under its election symbol? With elections looming, minor political parties in Tamil Nadu are caught in this dilemma, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Tamil Nadu government on Monday said Apollo Hospitals and AIIMS reports on the treatment given to late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa has clearly suggested that she passed away on December 5 after a massive cardiac arrest.
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