Tamil Nadu Finance Minister O. Panneerselvam finds himself in an unenviable position once again. While he has been unofficially sidelined in the party with most of his supporters losing party posts in his native Theni district itself, Mr. Panneerselvam, called OPS in AIADMK circles, finds himself thrust into the task of shouldering the State’s governance for the third time.
This time, he will find it much more difficult as Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has been hospitalised since September 22 and is recuperating under respiratory support.
In 2001, when for the first time he was introduced to the media as the new Chief Minister after Ms. Jayalalithaa’s appointment was quashed by the Supreme Court in view of her conviction in the TANSI cases, hardly any one knew him. Only a few months earlier, he was elected from the Periyakulam constituency.
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He was the chairman of the Periyakulam Municipality in Theni district during 1996-2001 when he befriended the local MP T.T.V. Dinakaran, a relative of Ms. Jayalalithaa’s close aide Sasikala. While Mr. Dinakaran has since been sidelined, Mr. Panneerselvam has managed to rise.
“OPS was with the Janaki faction when the AIADMK split after MGR’s death. But one of his lawyer friends advised him to join the Jayalalithaa faction as he saw her as the future leader of the party. It was his friendship with Dinakaran that led to his meteoric rise,” recalls a friend of Mr. Panneerselvam in Periyakulam. He represents the Thevar community, considered the backbone of the AIADMK for two decades now.
Party cadre in Theni say that it was Mr. Dinakaran who got Mr. Panneerselvam the Revenue portfolio, usually reserved for party seniors, in 2001. After Ms. Jayalalithaa returned as Chief Minister next year, he became her most trusted loyalist and was rewarded with the powerful Public Works Department portfolio.
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The chosen one
Between 2006 and 2011, when the DMK was in power, he was leading the party mostly in the absence of Ms. Jayalalithaa and even earned the sobriquet Patchai Thamizhan (Real Tamil) from DMK president M. Karunanidhi. When AIADMK returned to power in 2011, he was appointed Minister for Finance and PWD and ranked number two in the Cabinet. “His loyalty was one of the reasons OPS was chosen as Chief Minister in 2014 [when a Bengaluru special court convicted Ms. Jayalalithaa in a disproportionate assets case],” says a party senior. “There were several contenders for the post but OPS was the chosen one,” he recalls.
Ahead of the 2016 elections though, Mr. Panneerselvam was reportedly blacklisted along with two other then senior ministers – Natham R. Viswanathan (Electricity) and P. Palaniappan (Higher Education) – following some adverse reports about them. It was alleged that they abused their positions.
If party sources are to be believed, Mr. Panneerselvam had given an undertaking of sorts to rein in his family members and was rehabilitated after he won from Bodi. But he was stripped of the PWD portfolio, often referred to as a “cash cow” in official circles. However, he continued to be No. 2 in the Cabinet, which, party seniors think made him the automatic choice to hold the portfolios of the Chief Minister in her absence.
Wide acceptance
“There is a much higher level of acceptance among public and opposition parties to OPS as an ad hoc replacement to Ms. Jayalalithaa than any other AIADMK leader,” says a party senior when asked why he was chosen.
“OPS has been there in a similar position twice before. Already, there is public resentment. Appointing any other person will create confusion and suspicion among people,” says another party senior requesting anonymity. “OPS is not a man of controversy. Like [DMK treasurer] Stalin, if you tell him that some scheme was not worthy of the trouble, he won’t do it,” says a senior bureaucrat who has worked with him.
On the governance aspect, though, Mr. Panneerselvam was seen as inactive when he was at the helm. In the present context, adviser to the government Sheela Balakrishnan and Chief Secretary P. Rama Mohana Rao are expected to steer the government, officials say.
Meanwhile, functionaries in Theni district say that the newly appointed district secretary Thanga Tamilselvan, a long time rival of Mr. Panneerselvam, has systematically removed most of his supporters from key party positions, indicating that he is not on a strong wicket.