Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Feb 27: A three-time stand-in Chief Minister O Panneerselvam, popularly known as OPS to his friends and rivals, on Friday joined the Tamil Nadu ruling party DMK in the presence of the Chief Minister M K Stalin and senior DMK leaders in Chennai in a bid for his political resurrection.
The inducement was unmistakable. If the DMK returns to power in a few months, OPS will be its nominee for Assembly Speaker, sources said.
For a man who built his public life as an “Amma loyalist,” touching Jayalalitha’s feet before taking oath in 2001 and twice handing back power to her without hesitation, the move marks a second life, and perhaps the last major turn, in a career defined by loyalty, patience, confusion, and miscalculations.
The man who had refused to sit in Jayalalitha’s chair as mark of reverence for the former actress-turned-politician and later lost his party, position, and much of his political capital after revolting against the AIADMK leadership, had become the Chief Minister first in 2001, when Jayalalitha stepped down following a court order in the TANSI case. He was then a first-time MLA. In 2014, after her conviction in the disproportionate assets case, he took over again. In 2016, as she was hospitalised, he was allocated the CM’s portfolios, though not the title.
The AIADMK’s organisation secretary and former Law Minister, C.Ve. Shanmugam, said on Friday that the OPS’ joining the DMK was a matter of joy for the Dravidian major. He added that “my party has been freed of the affliction of Saturn,” meaning the end of the party’s bad phase. “For us, the day marks [Thai] Pongal and Deepavali. We can now focus all our energy and attention on securing victory for the party in the Assembly election,” Mr Shanmugam said.
But another former close aide of Jayalalitha saw the development as a setback for her party. Describing Mr Panneerselvam’s move as “unfortunate,” former interim general secretary of the AIADMK, V.K. Sasikala, in a post on social media, said it was wrong to view the DMK as “the parent body,” as it was an “evil force” that must be removed from the State’s political scene.
Ms Sasikala, who had recently launched a party of her own, held the present leadership of the AIADMK responsible for the development. She said “the end is approaching for betrayers who consider themselves the AIADMK and declare themselves leaders of the party, by misleading their associates, evicting all members of the party, remaining in the grip of the DMK, and by going against the policies of Puratchi Thalaivar [M.G. Ramachandran] and Puratchi Thalaivi [Jayalalitha].” She vowed to defeat these betrayers and adversaries at the hustings.
Since Nanjil K. Manoharan, the first Finance Minister of the AIADMK government during 1977-80, there has been a long line of prominent leaders – including S. Raghavanandam and P.U. Shanmugam – who have returned to the DMK. After all, this crop of leaders had cut their teeth in the 76-year-old Dravidian major. Many of the Ministers in the present DMK regime, such as K.K.S.S.R. Ramachandran, S. Muthusamy, S. Regupathy, R.S. Rajakannappan, and E.V. Velu, left the AIADMK on different occasions as they could not accept the leadership of Jayalalithaa for one reason or another. Post-Jayalalithaa, younger AIADMK leaders – V. Senthil Balaji, P. Palaniappan, and Thanga Tamilselvan, once considered a bete noire of Mr Panneerselvam, as both hail from Theni district – gravitated towards the DMK. Between August 2025 and January 2026, prominent figures from the Panneerselvam camp in the AIADMK – V. Maitreyan, P.H. Manoj Pandian, and R. Vaithilingam – also followed suit.
Mr Panneerselvam’s instinct of loyalty shaped his fateful break. After Jayalalithaa died in 2016, OPS initially handed over power to V K Sasikala. But as she prepared to take the oath, he rebelled in a midnight sit-in at the Jayalalithaa memorial, refusing to step aside. That assertion of independence marked the beginning of his political decline for the next few years
Edappadi K Palaniswami consolidated control of the AIADMK. The BJP, which sought to manage the fractured Dravidian space, kept OPS in play, at times promising rehabilitation within the AIADMK. In 2024, he contested independently, with tacit encouragement from the BJP, but failed to regain relevance.
Even two days ago, according to one of his closest aides, there were assurances from an RSS ideologue that reconciliation might yet be engineered. It did not materialise. With the election approaching, Panneerselvam faces a narrowing field. Two doors were open: Vijay’s TVK, still untested, or the ruling DMK, led by a seasoned CM with a national profile.
Stalin’s offer — the Speaker’s post — was, for a former CM, both dignified and strategic. It avoids placing him in direct administrative competition while granting him constitutional stature. For OPS whose public persona has long been that of a presiding loyalist rather than an assertive executive, the role fits.
It also secures his home turf of Bodinayakkanur in Theni district that becomes a negotiated seat within a larger alliance. Along with him came key loyalists, including former MP O P Ravindranath Kumar, his son, and party figures such as Vaithilingam and Manoj Pandian, who had already drifted toward the DMK. A senior DMK leader described the sequence bluntly: “First the employees joined. Now the CEO has joined.”
