Palanivel Thiaga Rajan is an alumnus of MIT Sloan School of Management. He takes over as TN finance minister at a time when the state is reeling under high debt and huge fiscal deficit.
The Congress leader also congratulated Mamata Banerjee, M K Stalin and the Left parties for their victories in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala assembly polls respectively.
While Kamal Haasan polled just over 33% of the votes in Coimbatore South, other candidates from his party failed to make any dent in the opponents' prospects.
With no Jayalalithaa & battling anti-incumbency, Chief Minister Palaniswami held his own and ensured AIADMK will still be a vital part of the state's politics as the main opposition.
Several names, considered promising candidates for their parties, lost the seats they contested in 2021 assembly polls in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam & Puducherry.
2021 assembly elections were a super-charged affair dogged by controversy from the get-go, primarily on account of the rallies convened by parties amid Covid.
Udhayanidhi Stalin, son of DMK chief M.K. Stalin & grandson of former CM M.K. Karunanidhi, is leading by a comfortable margin at Chepauk-Thiruvallikeni.
What is Shiv Sena’s ideology? We might say it’s been a convenient mix of extreme ethnic chauvinism & unforgiving Hindutva. Within the second, the party retained space to manoeuvre.