Ease, freeze

The Supreme Court said that a General Council meeting including the OPS faction shall be convened to take a call on AIADMK’s Erode East by-poll candidate. The bench also said that this interim arrangement should be made to take a call on the candidate by both the leaders. As per the top court’s order, O Panneerselvam’s expulsion from the party stands set aside for the time being.After the passing of former Chief Minister and the party’s General Secretary J Jayalalithaa, and the arrest of the subsequent interim General Secretary V Sasikala, Palaniswami and Panneerselvam had held the posts of Joint coordinator and coordinator of the party, respectively. Their tenure, as per Panneerselvam, was supposed to lapse on June 23, 2022.However, the party held a General Council meeting on July 11, 2022 which passed resolutions to abolish these posts and restore the post of General Secretary. This effectively left Palaniswami at the helm.Coming days will be crucial for both EPS and OPS. AIADMK party presidium chairman A Tamizh Magan Hussain would invite through “correspondence” votes of members of the general council from Saturday to choose the AIADMK candidate for the byelection, wind up the process by Monday and recommend the same to the Election Commission. The SC order could ease the symbol battle for EPS as well and swing things in his favour to win the fight for the two leaves symbol and ensure it is not frozen