Reportor's Diary: Seeking counsel in pursuit of power, glory

CHENNAI: Even seasoned political minds need the occasional external counsel to revive fortunes. Estranged AIADMK leader VK Sasikala, one of the claimants of the party, is the latest politician to realise it.

A once-powerful Sasikala’s recent rendezvous with former party heavyweight ‘Panruti’ Ramachandran might have been that counselling call. A tad too late to happen though. Sasikala’s meeting, ostensibly, is an effort to defeat what her lieutenants describe as the skulduggery of her one-time loyalists turned adversaries and steer her political trajectory up north.

Grapevine has it that Ramachandran might have chalked out a plan for Sasi to warm up to the powers in New Delhi to reclaim her ‘lost’ glory. Informed cheerleaders from Sasikala’s camp have been gladly feeding journalists that she’d be shuttling between Chennai and Delhi more often than she did in the recent past to jack up her political stakes. Her rapporteurs were indicating in public that her rival’s luck might have run out.

Admittedly, her visit to the old horse’s stable did not go in vain. Ramachandran was quick to subtly deprecate the rise of AIADMK interim general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami, and hint at a possible reunion of the party with a guard change at the helm.

Incidentally, the development happened amid secret parleys between her and former Chief Minister O Panneerselvam, another claimant of the AIADMK crown.