Like many before him, Panneerselvam joins DMK, but here’s why he is different

Former Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam’s shift to DMK marks a unique political transition amid party dynamics in Tamil Nadu.

By joining the DMK, former Chief Minister and coordinator of the AIADMK, O. Panneerselvam, has followed the path taken by a host of leaders of his parent party. However, the similarity ends there, as no one else has been a three-time Chief Minister.

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.

None of those who went back to the DMK or began their new innings in the ruling party were seriously considered for the post of Chief Minister when they were in the AIADMK. But the former coordinator of the AIADMK, who also held the post of treasurer, was handpicked by Jayalalithaa in 2001 and 2014 to head the government when courts of law had terminated her chief ministership. When Jayalalithaa died in December 2016, the mantle fell on him again, even though, by then, reservations were increasingly being expressed within the AIADMK over the advisability of his selection.

Immediately after Mr. Panneerselvam quit the Chief Minister’s post for the third time in February 2017 and took on former interim general secretary V.K. Sasikala, perceived to have been one of his benefactors till then, his popularity touched an all-time high. However, his problem was that he could not convert it into a durable asset for the faction – AIADMK (Puratchi Thalaivi Amma) – that he headed for about six months that year. In August, his group and then Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami’s faction – AIADMK (Amma) – came together under one fold, and the symbol of “two leaves,” which had remained frozen for about eight months, was allotted to the amalgamated entity. Mr. Panneerselvam, who was the party treasurer till his expulsion in July 2022, had, many a time, attributed his 2017 move to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s advice.

After his exit from the AIADMK, Mr. Panneerselvam did not lose time in re-establishing his ties with the founder of the Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK), T.T.V. Dhinakaran, who had played a key role in catapulting him to the Chief Minister’s post in 2001. After all, Mr. Panneerselvam, who was with the Janaki Ramachandran faction of the party during 1988-89, was virtually an unknown figure outside his area, and the only position of significance he had held was the chairpersonship of the Periyakulam municipality during 1996-2001. It was only during the 2001 Assembly poll that he was fielded for the first time. The revival of the relationship between the two leaders happened seamlessly because Mr. Dhinakaran had become a bitter critic of Mr. Palaniswami. Unsurprisingly, the AMMK leader and the former Chief Minister contested the 2024 Lok Sabha election as constituents of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

As someone who began his political career from a modest background by running a tea shop in Periyakulam, about 80 km west of Madurai, the 76-year-old Mr. Panneerselvam, who hails from the Maravar sub-sect of the Mukkulathor community (a social coalition of three subsects including Kallar and Agamudaiyar), dropped hints of inching closer to the DMK even in July-August last year when he called on Chief Minister and ruling party chief M.K. Stalin on a few occasions. For the next six months, he maintained an ambivalent public stance, continuing to exhibit a soft corner towards Mr. Modi and Union Minister for Home Affairs Amit Shah. In fact, when the NDA won in Bihar in November, Mr. Panneerselvam, who was no longer part of the NDA in the State then, greeted the Prime Minister and the Union Home Minister.