Will the two AIADMK factions unite smoothening out the problems in power sharing and also ignoring the emerging third faction trying to block the merger move?

There were expectations about the merger of factions led by former chief minister O Pannerselvam and Chief Minister E Palaniswamy on Friday but last minute hiccups stopped it for the time being. The matter is quite complex. After the death of J Jayalalithaa on December 5 last year, the AIADMK split into two factions – O Pannerselvam (OPS) and E. Palaniswamy (EPS) – and now after the merger move a third faction led by the party’s Deputy General secretary TTV Dinakaran is emerging. Dinakaran is trying to destabilize the EPS government and capture the party. He is banking on the fact that it was the Sasikala group’s money power which installed the EPS government after the removal of OPS.

Things were going as per script until now. The OPS faction insisted on three demands – a probe into Jaya’s death, converting her Poes Garden residence into a memorial for her, and removal of Sasikala from the post of General Secretary. Sasikala is in a Bangalore jail undergoing the four-year prison sentence given by the Supreme Court in the Disproportionate assets case.

Chief minister EPS has announced his cabinet’s decisions on Thursday on the first two demands but has not yielded on the removal of Sasikala so far. When merger was expected to be announced on Friday, the OPS faction blocked it once again demanding that he should be made the Party General Secretary, a powerful post held by Jayalalitha and now Sasikala, if EPS was to remain chief minister. They also demanded some other positions while EPS was willing to give OPS the post of Deputy chief minister and the Finance portfolio.

The main factor now appears to be power sharing. So why is this unity move? The puppeteer is the BJP, which does not have a single MLA in the state but wants to expand in the South. Despite decades of efforts the BJP has not been able to find space in the Dravidian ideology dominated Tamil Nadu politics and what better way than to do some piggy-back riding on the AIADMK to gain some space? The BJP has been working silently these past eight months.

The party is keen that the united AIADMK should become an NDA ally so that the BJP will have some hold on the state. Also the AIADMK has 37 MPs in the Lok Sabha and 13 in Rajya Sabha. Both factions voted for the BJP’s presidential and vice presidential candidates recently raising further hopes. The OPS and EPS factions are not able to resist the pressure, as both are vulnerable on several fronts and have skeletons in their cupboards.

The BJP is trying to merge the AIADMK factions so that it will gain well-oiled readymade machinery, as the AIADMK is a cadre-based party.

Tamil Nadu is an important part of BJP’s larger poll plan and Amit Shah’s “Mission 350” in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. If AIADMK becomes an NDA ally it will strengthen the BJP presence in the South. BJP General Secretary Muralidhar Rao among others is working to execute this plan. Prime Minister Modi played the peacemaker last week when both EPS and OPS came Delhi to participate in the oath taking ceremony of Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu.

There are also rumours that two cabinet posts may be given to the AIADMK when Modi expands his cabinet. There are also sideshows with two Tamil superstars Rajnikant and Kamal Hasan emerging on the horizon. Both have been making political statements for some time, looking to occupy the space left after Jaya’s death.

While the BJP has been wooing Rajnikant, the DMK is now persuading Kamal Hasan to join the party. The aggressive nature of Kamal Hasan’s tweets has made political observers wonder if this is a precursor to his formal entry into politics.

He has called for a new independence movement against corruption. In the last seven months he has taken every possible opportunity to put across his stand and also criticize the EPS government. The main opposition DMK is waiting to grab the political space but it needs a charismatic face. Kamal Hasan could well be the face as he has his own fan following.

The other part of the BJP’s plan revolves around the Tamil superstar Rajnikant. He has been shying away from entering politics for the past three decades but now has given enough hints that he is thinking of launching a party.

Rajnikanth’s fans remember his famous Muthu film dialogue, where he said, ‘No one knows when or how I will enter but I will enter at the right time’. Given Rajnikanth’s proximity to Modi he is expected to form an alliance with the BJP.

Crafting a regional alliance is the only way the BJP can hope to gain influence in Tamil Nadu. The grand plan is to have a triangle of the united AIADMK, Rajnikant’s future party and the BJP as allies.

Yet another small party, the PMK, a caste based outfit is already an NDA ally and this would continue. So the success of the merger is important for not only the two factions but also for the BJP.