For OPS, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel

O Panneerselvam has overplayed his political card, and has few political options left.

On March 19, as former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O Panneerselvam stood by the podium at the Salem public meeting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and made his speech, he must have felt hugely relieved to have at last been publicly acknowledged by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as an ally. Life has been tough of late for the veteran All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) leader who was ejected from the party in July 2022, and since then has been trying to find his political footing.

For the last several months, OPS (as O Panneerselvam is referred to by his followers) has desperately been wooing the BJP, often to the point of embarrassment. He insisted his faction, which is still not a separate political outfit, was in negotiations with the national party for an electoral alliance. The BJP, still hoping that the AIADMK and its leader Edappadi K Palaniswami would walk back into the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), refused to even confirm that it was in talks with OPS. As Modi crisscrossed Tamil Nadu multiple times over the last month, there was no place for OPS on the dais. At one point he even weakly said he would have to consider his options, but quickly fell back to toe the BJP line. At Salem, he finally got the acknowledgement he appeared to be craving for.

The problems for OPS are many. First, he does not have a party. After having insisted that he was the ‘real’ AIADMK, he now has to reconcile to the idea that he cannot use the party name or symbol following a court order. Second, he does not have many supporters, at least among senior leaders. He is left with a group of three MLAs, and very little support from his erstwhile party cadre. This has severely limited his options.

OPS draws his support from his Mukkulathor community in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu. There too, he is not their undisputed leader. Traditionally AIADMK voters, the Mukkulathors now split their votes between the AIADMK, T T V Dhinakaran of the Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK) who also belongs to the same community, and OPS, with the DMK also wooing some of them. This has limited his bargaining power in any negotiation.

If the OPS faction is allotted seats by the BJP, it will have to contest either on the BJP’s symbol or as independents, as there is very little time to form a political party and apply for a common symbol. In any case, OPS may only be allocated a handful of seats if at all, as the BJP has already allocated 10 seats to S Ramadoss’ Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), and there are several small allies including a few industrialist-run parties which also need to be accommodated.

The septuagenarian former Chief Minister has burnt his bridges with the AIADMK and has limited options now. Joining the BJP is one option, but for a former chief minister to work under a BJP state president who is younger than his son would be a bitter pill to swallow.

Many have suggested that OPS would now focus on the career of his son and Lok Sabha MP O P Raveendranath, who was the only AIADMK candidate to win in 2019. Rumour is that OPS tried to have Raveendranath elevated as a minister in the Modi government, but failed.

OPS’ popularity went sky high when as chief minister he sat at Jayalalithaa’s samadhi in 2017 and rebelled against Sasikala Natarajan who had asked him to step down. People saw him as a politician out to restore the glory of the AIADMK, and free it from the clutches of what was then called the ‘Mannargudi mafia’, the term that was used to describe Sasikala and her family members and associates.

Within weeks though, the halo had gone. First, he was unable to rustle up the numbers to topple the Sasikala faction, then led by Palaniswami. Then a series of compromises and political flip-flops ruined whatever image was left of OPS as a neta. He had a chance of going back to the AIADMK as the deputy to Palaniswami, an offer he spurned. With very limited support in the AIADMK, he aspired for the top job and was shown the door.

A series of reverses in the courts on claiming everything from the party symbol to the headquarters to the name, have meant that OPS today is a shadow of his former self. The man who was handpicked twice by Jayalalithaa to be her stand-in chief minister finds himself staring at a bleak political future.

(Sumanth Raman is a Chennai-based television anchor and political analyst.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.