Will Dhinakaran prove himself this election?

Its 3.45 pm and one could see men dressed in crisp white shirts and dhotis all over. The corridor on the first floor of Parison’s Court Hotel in this southern Tamil Nadu town is noisy even as their leader was getting ready for the long evening inside a suite room.

At 4.20, T T V Dhinakaran, the nephew of now-jailed AIADMK leader V K Sasikala who has rebelled against the current leadership of the ruling party, walks out of his suite, dressed in his trade-mark full collared half-sleeves shirt and dhoti, exchanging pleasantries with cadre and posing for selfies.

He gets onto the front seat of the specially-designed tempo van for his campaign and reaches the first point – Vella Vinayagar Koil in Dindigul – as the crowd gathered erupts in joy. “Makkal Selvar” – the sobriquet of Dhinakaran – and “Puratchi Thalaivi Amma Vaazhga” (Long Live Jayalalithaa) rent the air. After 10 minutes, the convoy zips past through the Dindigul-Periyakulam highway to reach Sembatti, where hundreds of enthusiastic supporters are waiting on either side of the road.

People holding ‘gift packet’ (the election symbol of Dhinakaran’s AMMK) wait patiently as the convoy wades into the crowd. From atop the vehicle, Dhinakaran asks for a microphone and begins his speech amid chanting of slogans. “Let me speak,” he politely tells his cadre and tears into the “betrayers” a word that he has coined for Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and his deputy O Panneerselvam and asks people to defeat the AIADMK-BJP alliance.

“The DMK-Congress alliance projects as if they are going to win. They are not. Will they win?” he asks the crowd. “No,” the crowd erupts again and Dhinakaran ends his speech, sporting a smile of his face. He holds meetings with party men in the vehicle before reaching Bathalagundu in Dindigul district – the crowd is much bigger here and Dhinakaran chooses to target the DMK, which is strong here.

After the speech, excited supporters and the public try to shake hands with him even though he is one hour late to the next minute. Before reaching Devadanapatti in Theni district, from where he was elected to Lok Sabha in 1999, the convoy makes impromptu stops as people on either side of the road wave at him.

By the time the convoy reaches Periyakulam, it is 8.15 pm, 90 minutes behind the schedule, and more than 2,000 people wait at the main bazaar. It takes 10 minutes for the driver to park the vehicle properly and when Dhinakaran takes the microphone, it is already 8.30 pm. “A day will come when OPS comes to Periyakulam to sell tea,” Dhinakaran says, in a full-blown attack against Panneerselvam, who ran a tea shop before plunging in politics, after asking the people to vote for ‘son of the soil’ Thanga Tamilselvan.

With three more points left to be covered, the convoy paces up speed, but it is stopped by an enthusiastic crowd at Theni where Dhinakaran spoke for another 10 minutes. By the time the convoy reached Andipatti, it was five minutes past 10 and Dhinakaran could not speak to the people, but just wave at them.