“The Dravidian Deception: Tamil Nadu Post- Jayalalitha, Post-Karunanidhi and a Decade of DMK Misrule Part 7”, My Ind Maker, April 22, 2026
“The Collapse of the AIADMK
The death of Jayalalithaa in December 2016 threw the AIADMK into an immediate and existential crisis. The party had been built entirely around her personality — there was no second tier of leadership with independent political standing, no ideology beyond Amma-worship, and no institutional mechanisms for orderly succession. The moment she was gone, the factionalism that her authority had suppressed erupted with destructive force.
The central drama was the Sasikala episode. V.K. Sasikala — Jayalalithaa’s long-time companion and the most powerful figure in her household — moved swiftly to claim the Chief Ministership, engineering the election of herself as AIADMK legislature party leader. Governor Ch. Vidyasagar Rao refused to invite her to form the government, citing the pending Supreme Court verdict in the disproportionate assets case. The Supreme Court then convicted Sasikala in the disproportionate assets case, sending her to prison and ending her direct political ambitions.
The Edappadi K. Palaniswami government that resulted from the ensuing AIADMK internal negotiations was a minority government surviving on political manipulation, defection management, and the tolerance of a weakened opposition. Palaniswami — a Gounder caste leader with a base in western Tamil Nadu but no statewide charisma — was a caretaker figure rather than a political leader in the Jayalalithaa mould. His government’s record was marked by administrative drift, continued corruption, and the emergence of the Sasikala family’s nexus (the so-called ‘Mannargudi mafia’) as a parallel power centre…….”
Read full article at myind.net
