Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief Jayalalithaa on Saturday revoked the expulsion of close aide Sasikala. She had been sacked from the party in December for 'trying to dominate the AIADMK'.
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 jailed All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader had applied for 15-day parole on Monday, seeking temporary release to attend to her ailing husband, M Natarajan, 74, who is in the liver intensive care unit of a corporate hospital.
The December 1996 raid came following a complaint by BJP's Subramaniam Swamy naming late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa.
The move of expelled All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader V K Sasikala to stay away from politics has fuelled various theories on her decision while the ruling party confined itself to poll related work like holding interview for ticketaspirants.
'Our party cadre does not want her in the party.'
Amid the intense battle for power, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O Panneerselvam on Monday arrived at the state secretariat.
Expelled All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader V K Sasikala was set free on Wednesday by authorities after she completed four years imprisonment in a jail here in a case of disproportionate assets, setting off celebrations by her supporters in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
Sources said the governor won't be going to Chennai on Tuesday.
She unfurled the AIADMK flag at the T Nagar memorial of party founder and late Chief Minister M G Ramachandran in Chennai and a plaque unveiled on the occasion addressed her as party 'general secretary,' which was strongly opposed by the main opposition party.
'The entire bandwagon of MLAs will move to our side.'
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".
It has now asked Sasikala to either sign the response herself or by an authorised signatory who is in the commission's list of AIADMK office bearers and send it again by March 10.
The petitioner had contended that Sasikala was made general secretary by the AIADMK general council in violation of Rule 20 of the party by-laws.
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.
Panneerselvam had opposed the petition saying the whip was issued only to the 122 MLAs who were then camping in a resort and not his erstwhile group.
The AIADMK propaganda secretary also claimed "Panneerselvam is instable." State minister C Ve Shanmugam called Panneerselvam "a betrayer".
'If the EPS government falls, Sasikala will return. If EPS wins, he will become an indispensable leader and Sasikala will not be able to return.' T E Narasimhan reports.
Assistant Commissioner Sanjay and another official served the summons to Dinakaran at his Besant Nagar residence.
On various occasions, the leaders of the two faction have maintained that they no longer have differences.
"I could not even stay at my house and goons are being sent against me. I do not know who (goons) they are...," Jayakumar said.
As leaders go, while Modi's visits to the state will be watched with curiosity, Rahul will need to be dislodged from the popular consciousness -- Tamil Nadu is one state where he's present, notes Aditi Phadnis.
The Delhi high court, on March 9, allowed Dinakaran's plea for allotment of a common symbol, preferably 'pressure cooker', and a name of his choice for the AIADMK faction led by him.
If Sasikala wants to stay in active politics, she will have to go to EPS crawling, reports Aditi Phadnis.
'The BJP has become a reasonably larger force in Tamil Nadu in the last two years.'
The big question is: Will her release be a threat to Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami? The answer is, while it may give him moments of nervousness, he will not be replaced, say political experts. T E Narasimhan reports.
Replying to an RTI query the DIG-Prisons said that except for a television set, other facilities were not allowed to her.
We supported the Panneerselvam-led government on certain people's issues, on certain policies and Bills, Stalin said.
Ace Indian off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin is now in a wave of a storm for what appeared to be criticising the government of Tamil Nadu.
Madusudanan had been removed from all posts besides the primary membership for going against the party principles and bringing disrepute to it, she said in a statement in Chennai.
If not for Palaniswami, it is hard to guess if the AIADMK would have been able to garner 33.3 per cent vote share as against the DMK's 37.7 per cent. AIADMK won 66 seats, its allies Pattali Makkal Katchi and Bharatiya Janata Party five and four seats respectively and proved yet again that the western region was its fortress.
Despite the BJP's displeasure over Sasikala's elevation as AIADMK general secretary, the Dravidian party has sent a message to the Modi government that it will not be cowed down, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Party co-coordinator Palaniswami announced constitution of a 11-member steering committee which includes ministers Dindigul C Sreenivasan, P Thangamani, and S P Velumani.
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.
While forwarding her copies of the petition, the commission asked her to respond by February 28 "failing which it will be presumed that you have no comments to offer and the commission will take appropriate action in the matter".
'Both are mature enough to realise that a break will not benefit either of them and both will be losers'
Tamil Nadu Governor Vidyasagar Rao is understood to have made it clear that he will await the judgement of the Supreme Court in disproportionate assets case against All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam General Secretary V K Sasikala before taking any decision on the issue of chief ministership, TV channels reported on Friday.
Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu are centred on chief ministerial candidates of rival parties. When Sasikala cannot contest even a panchayat election for six years after her release, even if she were to have sympathetic backers even among apolitical voters, she does not have any 'transferrable vote-bank' even otherwise for a chief minister candidate of her choice, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
A day after the Tamil Nadu assembly speaker disqualified 18 MLAs from the AIADMK's V K Sasikala-T T V Dinakaran faction, Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar spoke to a couple of MLAs.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said his government has always taken care of the welfare of Sri Lankan Tamils and 'consistently' flagged the issue of their rights with the leaders in the island nation.
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