Tamil Nadu will have a new Chief Minister by Sunday. The AIADMK legislators will meet in Chennai to elect a leader in place of Jayalalithaa. Finance Minister O Paneerselvan, who is close to Jayalalithaa, may preside over the legislature party meeting.
Paneerselvan was the only Cabinet colleague of Jayalalithaa who was present in the court when the judge pronounced the verdict. It was Paneerselvan, who was made Chief Minister in September 2001 when the Supreme Court nullified the then Governor’s decision to appoint Jayalalithaa as Chief Minister. However, there is no guarantee that Paneerselvan would be nominated again for the top post.
In all likelihood, Jayalalithaa may nominate a junior member or a representative from a socially backward section as the CM. Interestingly, the name of former Chief Secretary Sheela Balakrishnan is also in the reckoning.
The other names spoken in AIADMK camp for the top job include A Avaneethakrishnan, an MP, Power Minister N Viswanathan and Transport Minister Senthil Balaji.
While Jayalalithaa’s conviction and sentencing is a big blow to the ruling AIADMK, which she had led to a landslide victory in the 2011 Assembly polls, in case of the higher courts too not providing her relief in the due course, the party will have to fight the next Assembly elections in the State scheduled in 2016 without her. Given that the party is entirely dependent on Jayalalithaa, AIADMK’s fate in her absence will hang in the balance. Under her leadership, the AIADMK had also overcome the Modi wave in the State to sweep the lok Sabha polls.
The AIADMK also faces the eventuality of 66-year-old Jayalalithaa being barred from contesting any election for the next 10 years, which could prove detrimental to both her and her party’s political prospects. But then, in 2001, following her conviction and the returning officers refusing to accept her nomination papers from four constituencies in the Assembly elections, the AIADMK had swept the elections.
Jayalalithaa’s stepping down as Chief Minister and ceasing to be a member of the Assembly is not going to make any major change in Tamil Nadu politics in the immediate future.
In AIADMK, Jayalalithaa is the unquestioned leader and there is no one who can challenge or question her. Those who had revolted against her in the past are in political wilderness in spite of the fact that the DMK had accommodated such persons temporarily.
As for the DMK, Tamil Nadu’s principal Opposition party, it is in a shambles due to the rivalry among its chief Karunanidhi’s siblings and corruption cases against some of its prominent party leaders, including Kanimozhi, the party patriarch’s daughter.
Moreover, the AIADMK has an absolute brutal majority in the House of 234 with 151 members. In the lok Sabha election, all major Opposition parties like DMDK, PMK, MDMK were battered and bruised by Amma’s “onslaught”.
With the decimation of caste-based parties like PMK, DMDK and the MDMK, Tamil Nadu is seeing a political vacuum which has led the BJP to sense an opportunity.
“This is the right time for the BJP to step in and establish itself as a viable alternative in the State. People in the State are fed up with the Dravidian kind of politics which is notorious for corruption, nepotism and anti-national activities. The popularity of Narendra Modi will help the BJP to establish as a major political party in the State,” said Dr Subramanian Swamy, senior BJP leader, who had filed the disproportionate assets case against Jayalalithaa.