J Jayalalithaa, mother of sops, looks for historic win

Her supporters have for long referred to her as 'Amma', but it was only ahead of this election that J Jayalalithaa openly donned that mantle. Dangling a Santa-bag of freebies in front of the people, Jayalalithaa played the 'mother-knows-best' card in her bid to break a favourite tradition of Tamil Nadu politics - the three-decade habit of showing the Chief Minister the boot.

Jayalalithaa's party, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), is a one-woman show all the way. Jayalalithaa is its sole face. Jayalalithaa is its sole hope. And anyone in the party doing anything 'does it on Amma's directions'. Every act, thought and breath of the party rank and file is merely the reflection of Amma's will. In the AIADMK, Jayalalithaa is the hand that giveth and the hand that taketh away.

Jayalalithaa has never had to develop a taste for precarious power; or for accommodation or compromise. She has never 'come' to power; she has only stormed to it with mandates of brute majority.

It is probably this very power to wield her will that has landed Jayalalithaa with not just the perception of being a 'good administrator' but also with the tag of 'arrogant'. These two have successively been the templates based on which she has been voted in or out of office.

But this time, as she did in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Jayalalithaa chose to challenge a particular norm of Tamil Nadu politics - the wider alliance wins. Fighting alone, Jayalalithaa had won 37 of the 39 constituencies in Tamil Nadu in 2014. Now too, she has stood on a severely fragmented political field and has hoped to benefit from having the largest vote share.

Jayalalithaa will be looking to take oath as Chief Minister for a record sixth time, and become the first CM in decades to return to power. The last person to do so was AIADMK founder and Jayalalithaa's mentor,

MG Ramachandran

or

MGR

, in 1984.

Jayalalithaa has faced the election with no major liabilities, as she has done in the past - no major graft allegations and with a few schemes that caught the people's imagination, like the budget canteens with one-rupee idlys. The verdict of May 19 will be a testament if those idlys were indeed good.