Edappadi K. Palaniswami | Accidental leader, born politician Premium

His rise was slow and steady for much of his political career, but accelerated in recent years.

In politics, accidental leaders eventually fade away after hogging the limelight in the positions to which they were catapulted by circumstances or by their masters. Only a few manage to change the tide in their favour or outwit their political handlers.

Former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami belongs to that breed of politicians who emerge from relative obscurity and seize opportunities to checkmate opponents by making the right moves on the political chessboard. Starting off from the lower rung, he has taken over as general secretary of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), a party that had ruled the State for over 30 years. Ahead of the Lok Sabha election in 2024, this role puts him in the driver’s seat of an AIADMK-led alliance, which will likely include the Bharatiya Janata Party.

His rise was slow and steady for much of his political career, but accelerated in recent years by an element of impatience and an uncanny ability to ruthlessly neutralise opponents.

In 1989, at 35, he debuted in the Legislative Assembly with his leader Jayalalithaa, then heading a faction of the AIADMK after the death of party founder M.G. Ramachandran (MGR). The name of his constituency, “Edappadi”, got prefixed to his name. He served briefly in the Lok Sabha (1998-99), before joining Jayalalithaa’s Cabinet in 2011. Yet, Mr. Palaniswami largely remained an inconsequential political figure outside his native turf in western Tamil Nadu. There was nothing noteworthy about the performance of this jaggery trader-turned-politician in the Assembly or Parliament.

As a Minister holding the meatier portfolios of Highways and Public Works Department (PWD) and ranked within the top five in the Cabinet seniority order, he preferred to be reverent to Jayalalithaa. Till her death in December 2016, he remained out of media limelight as were most Cabinet colleagues. There were whispers in political corridors about him being one among Jayalalithaa’s kitchen cabinet members. In the party hierarchy, he was not prominent, though Jayalalithaa appointed him propaganda secretary, a post created by MGR for her in the early 1980s, and later an organising secretary.

It was only on Valentine’s Day in 2017, when he met Governor C. Vidyasagar Rao staking claim to form the government, that Mr. Palaniswami became a household name in Tamil Nadu. However, the only perception people had was that of Mr. Palaniswami being a protégé of V.K. Sasikala, an extra-constitutional authority and former close aide of Jayalalithaa. People cringed at visuals of him crawling and prostrating to seek her blessings. What no one guessed was that the rustic man, with a tinge of holy ash smeared on his forehead and a toothy smile that would become his trademark, had stooped to conquer.

The circumstances under which he emerged as Chief Minister-designate were tumultuous. Ms. Sasikala had planned to step into her “surrogate sister” Jayalalithaa’s role after getting O. Panneerselvam, hand-picked by her to be a “remote-controlled Chief Minister”, to resign. Misguided by some external handlers, he revolted. She faced another setback when the Supreme Court convicted her in a corruption case in which Jayalalithaa was the prime accused.