Many dilemmas of being Tamil Nadu CM Edappadi Palanisamy
Edappadi Palanisamy is not a man to be envied. There is no chief minister in any state in India who has to do such a fine balancing act to stay in power.
The return of TTV Dhinakaran after getting bail in the two leaves symbol bribery case has compounded his problems. While Dhinakaran was away, inside Tihar jail in Delhi, EPS spent his energies trying to charm the BJP government in Delhi, which was all these months completely taken in by O Panneerselvam. Palanisamy's managers reached out behind the scenes to convince New Delhi that having kept both VK Sasikala and Dhinakaran away from the affairs of the AIADMK, they are as clean as OPS and therefore the BJP should not see the EPS faction as a tainted unit.
The charm offensive seemed to work, at least if the optics are anything to go by. Venkaiah Naidu chaired a review meeting with EPS at the Tamil Nadu secretariat in Chennai while Prime Minister Narendra Modi took out time to meet power minister P Thangamani, considered close to the CM.
With the presidential election in July, the BJP also does not want to upset the status quo in Tamil Nadu. It is keen to get all the AIADMK votes in its kitty — both in the Assembly and in Parliament — for its candidate. OPS, despite all the time in the world, has not managed to get more MLAs to cross over to his side and it is Palanisamy who has managed to stay in power. Which is why the BJP is keeping both the OPS and EPS factions engaged.
So far so good. But what EPS did not bargain for is the kind of support Dhinakaran would receive on his comeback trail. As many as 34 of the 122 lawmakers in the ruling AIADMK have sided openly with Dhinakaran. This means that EPS, technically speaking, is in office at Dhinakaran's mercy.
Even legally, Palanisamy has no option but to keep the Sasikala-Dhinakaran duo on his side. His camp has submitted 6.82 lakh affidavits endorsing and supporting Sasikala's elevation as general secretary and Dhinakaran's appointment as her deputy before the Election Commission. Which essentially means Palanisamy and his camp's followers are indulging in double talk as far as the family's position in the party is concerned.
Significantly, these affidavits have been submitted by district, taluk and ward level office-bearers of the AIADMK and that punctures the OPS camp's rhetoric that the cadre is on its side. In contrast, the Panneerselvam group has submitted only 3.8 lakh affidavits.
But Sasikala and nephew do not intend to upset the applecart yet. They realise it will be a case of cutting the nose to spite the face. The AIADMK has the mandate to rule till 2021 and the glue of power should ideally hold them together. While the relations between EPS and the duo aren't what they were in February, they have no option but to do business with each other.
This is because Dhinakaran cannot hope to be CM and usher in the Mannargudi family rule. But with 34 MLAs behind him, he has let EPS know that he can ignore him at his own peril. A group of 25 Dhinakaran camp MLAs met EPS on Thursday to reportedly tell him that while EPS can preside over the government, Dhinakaran as deputy general secretary should control the party. This essentially means reverting to the arrangement in the pre-RK Nagar byelection days.
EPS knows being seen in the same frame with Dhinakaran will be inviting trouble. In the last four months, he has tried to be his own man, refusing to let Bengaluru central prison dictate orders. But the RK Nagar bypoll campaign — during which his health minister was raided by income tax sleuths and documents found suggested that senior ministers, including the CM, was assigned with the task of distributing money — pushed him on to the back foot.
EPS has already burnt his bridges with OPS, with the latter calling off the merger process talks. Sources say the breaking point, apart from letting the Sasikala clan have a say in party affairs, was Palanisamy's refusal to give up his chair. The CM was not willing to be bulldozed into agreeing to the terms and conditions set by a much smaller group of the AIADMK.
Palanisamy is now in a catch-22 situation. If the Dhinakaran group links its support for the NDA candidate in the presidential election to according respect to their leader, EPS will have no option but to fall in line.
But beyond July 17, when the election will be done and dusted with, if Dhinakaran continues to have a say in decision-making, that could be the trigger to his downfall. The public will not take kindly to the CM being seen as a Sasikala stooge and the family ruling by proxy.
The sting operation done by a TV channel that showed both EPS and OPS factions trying to use money power to ensure legislator loyalty has hurt the party's image. The rambling by OPS faction MLA SS Saravanan (even though denied) and some of the middlemen, which suggested that the former chief minister was open to buying out MLAs from the rival camp, has taken the mask of an honest politician off Panneerselvam's face. The AIADMK in general, has come across as a pack of power-hungry politicians.
The DMK is hoping for the government to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions and for early elections to be called in the state.
With the AIADMK split threeways and Jayalalithaa's niece Deepa Jayakumar also staking claim to the party symbol, it is clear the AIADMK of Jayalalithaa died with her last December.