EPS breathes fresh life into the withering 'Two Leaves'

E DAPPADI K Palaniswami is a lone fighter. 

- S MANNAR MANNAN

Away from the electoral battles he once fought with a row of luminaries and legions of animated cadres in tow, the general secretary of AIADMK found himself forlorn, unkindly thrown to the Lok Sabha battlefield to fight a seemingly lost battle. The party which banked on charismatic leaders like MG Ramachandran (MGR) and J Jayalalithaa, who captained the ship with the mass support of both party cadres and the general public, was going rudderless after Lok Sabha elections were announced. The court battles he fought to retain his supremacy and party symbols also dragged on, creating a sharp void in the opposition space.

Born to Karuppa Goundar and Thavasiyammal at Siluvampalayam at Edappadi in Salem on May 12, 1954, EPS's political graph always had many ups and downs. And, he is facing the 2024 Lok Sabha election after two successive defeats. In the 2021 Tamil Nadu Assembly election, AIADMK under the twin leadership of EPS and O Panneerselvam contested 179 seats but managed to win only 66 seats, 70 less than the 136 seats the party had won in 2016 under the leadership of former CM J Jayalalithaa. Out of the 66 seats AIADMK won in 2021, a major chunk of 35 seats were from western TN, the party's fortress. The very next year in 2022, AIADMK was decimated by the ruling DMK in the local body elections losing all the corporations.