Two Leaves To Live

With Dinakaran’s arrest, a door opens for reconciliation between the two warring AIADMK factions. But the Sasikala clan still holds a few aces.

- Amarnath K. Menon

Hours before the warring AIADMK factions were to gather for talks at the party headquarters in Chennai on April 24, former chief minister O. Panneerselvam (OPS), who leads one of the camps, was accorded Y-plus security cover by the Centre following a “heightened threat perception” to his life. Then when information trickled in that the rival ruling faction of Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami (EPS) had not acted on their demand that posters of jailed ‘general secretary’ Sasikala Natarajan, be removed from the party HQ to maintain its “sanctity”, a miffed OPS cried off from the talks.

By the next evening, though, when the Delhi police arrested her nephew and party deputy general secretary T.T.V. Dinakaran (and duly Sasikala’s posters started coming down), both sides had climbed down to declare that conditions were conducive for talks.

In Tamil Nadu’s politics, cutting deals is second nature to many, more so in the AIADMK since the death of their puratchi thalaivi, J. Jayalalithaa. But suddenly, arriving at one between the party’s two warring factions seems a daunting task. For close to four decades, party leaders and the cadre had a domineering, decisive leader to look up to. Now the embattled AIADMK factions, staring at an uncertain future, realise that they may lose their last unifying emblem, the coveted ‘two leaves’ poll symbol.