The dinner was followed by a meeting in which nearly two dozen allies facilitated Prime Minister Modi.
The bodies of 16 Indians, who had perished in the July 30 fire accident at Manama in Bahrain, reached Chennai on Wednesday in a Gulf Air flight.
The faction led by O Panneerselvam will be referred to as 'AIADMK Puratchi Thalaivi Amma' and the Sasikala faction will be referred to as 'AIADMK Amma'.
Without a strong regional leadership the Aam Aadmi Party in Tamil Nadu may end up as just another political party in the statem says R. Ramasubramanian
Even as the actor-turned-politician said that it was just 'a courtesy call', speculation about a future alliance between them has been doing the rounds in the national capital, says R Rajagopalan.
From Chief Minister EK Palaniswami to Seeman to TTV Dhinakaran to elder brother M K Azhagiri, everyone's favourite target these days seems to the DMK chief Stalin, which is good news in an election year, but that doesn't mean he is going to sweep the polls, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Jayalalithaa could not do what MGR did, and Sasikala will not be able to do what Jayalalithaa did.'
Tamil Nadu minister Sellur K Raju said the death of Amma was a huge loss.
'Chief Minister Palaniswami is meeting Modi on December, 19, he may mention Tamil refugees when he talks to him.'
'The people of Tamil Nadu are fed up of these people, whether it is Panneerselvam or Palaniswami.'
Will just sit back and see, said Dinakaran over AIADMK merger.
While in the AIADMK office you could feel the vibes of victory, at OPS' house you could feel the struggle.
His comments come a day after state Fisheries Minister D Jayakumar claimed that 111 MLAs had attended the meet convened by the chief minister.
He addressed a luncheon meeting with top business executives, Trade and Chamber authorities and visited the MRF pace foundation, where legendry Aussie pacer Dennis Lillee imparts fast bowling tips to youngsters.
A Ganesh Nadar captures the mood and scenes from outside the hall in Vaanagaram where Sasikala was appointed as the new party chief.
While flight operations have already resumed, inter-intra state train services also were partially operating since Tuesday night, they said.
Reacting to the criticism, the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam said the government could not initially allot space at the Marina beach for burying the DMK leader due to pending cases against construction of memorials on the famous sands.
Natarajan was admitted to the hospital on Saturday with severe chest infection and was put on ventilator support.
Tamil Nadu government on Tuesday said it would release 30 Sri Lankan fishermen and 19 boats on December 22 and urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to prevail on the island nation to take similar action at the same time to set free fishermen from the state and their boats.
"Since the central government had assisted in the treatment of Jayalalithaa, it has a responsibility to unravel the mystery surrounding her death... Therefore, using its authority, it should immediately order a CBI probe into the matter," he said.
Dinakaran has been re-inducted and elevated to the position of deputy general secretary.
Modi and Shah have finalised names for the Rashtrapati's post, which the BJP boss has discussed with the RSS chief.
Two days after staking claim with him to form the government amidst political turmoil in Tamil Nadu, AIADMK General Secretary V K Sasikala on Saturday sought an appointment with Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao to parade MLAs supporting her before him.
Police later let the legislators off after a brief detention at a marriage hall. Stalin demanded the dismissal of the AIADMK government over the issue of the alleged pay-offs.
Every vote now counts in the Tamil Nadu assembly, as the ruling party is walking on a wafer-thin majority. The Opposition DMK-led combine has 98 MLAs on their side, and with four others who had won on the AIADMK's 'Two Leaves' symbol in 2016 but do not belong to the party, per se, playing hide-and-seek with the party leadership, Dhinakaran with two or three other MLAs can give sleepless nights for the ruling party than their post-verdict celebrations may seemingly indicate, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on Tuesday said that party supremo and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa is a "qualified" leader to lead the country after the next Lok Sabha polls and vowed to work towards this goal by securing all 40 seats in the state.
'One thing is clear from what happened last night; both sides are being manipulated by the same party with a lot of wrong inputs.' 'I see a hand in Delhi doing the puppet act on both sides.'
The apex court also rejected her plea for an open court hearing of the review petitions.
'When someone gives you one kilo of gold you have some obligations to them'
Five months since her conviction by a Karnataka court and being forced to step down as Tamil Nadu CM, Jayalalithaa has not been out of her house. However, she continues to run the Tamil Nadu government with the help of a few retired bureaucrats reports R Ramasubramanian.
The Tamil Nadu voter may not be in the mood to test new talent, not when the state and the people are going through unprecedented and unanticipated crises, of which coronavirus is only the first. All of it boils down to an election between the ruling AIADMK and the Opposition DMK next year, with small-timers, had-been parties and promised parties left on the sidelines, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
What will the Centre and the Tamil Nadu government do to answer the queries and fears of investors who will want to be doubly sure they would not be harassed at a later date, as has been happening to Sterlite, should be interesting to watch, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'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.
While several banks and ATMs are providing cash far below the allowed limit every now and then due to cash shortage, the damage caused by the cyclone has dealt a further blow with movement of cash vehicles coming to a grinding halt, resulting in empty ATMs.
The front-runner of course is party treasurer and long-serving party legislator, S Duraimurugan. A Vanniar by caste from the rival PMK-strong northern belt, Duraimurugan makes up for his weak political grounding through his debating skills in the assembly, and witty repartee, both inside and outside. Apart from caste and regional representation, personal loyalty to the leader would count even more -- but there is no death of loyal and competent candidates in the party for the post, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
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.
Five fishermen from Tamil Nadu, who were sentenced to death in Sri Lanka for alleged drug trafficking but set free after President Mahinda Rajapaksa pardoned them, arrived in Chennai on Friday.
By aligning with the BJP, even if they were arm-twisted into doing so, the AIADMK leadership has yielded their political space in the state to the aunt-nephew duo of Sasikala-Dinakaran, and the parliamentary election to the DMK-Congress combine, says A Ganesh Nadar.
The government brought back former Chennai Police Commissioner T K Rajendran, DGP and Inspector Genral prisons, as Chennai Police Commissioner replacing Ashutosh Shukla.
