Crucial Supreme Court verdict on VK Sasikala today

New Delhi/Chennai: A Supreme Court verdict in a disproportionate assets case — likely to be delivered Tuesday — will decide the political career of AIADMK general secretary V.K. Sasikala, and the course of her bitter power struggle with acting chief minister O. Panneerselvam.

If the top court confirms a Karnataka high court order acquitting her, she will have to pass a majority test in the Assembly.

India’s attorney general (AG) Mukul Rohatgi advised Tamil Nadu governor C. Vidyasagar Rao on Monday to hold a floor test in the Assembly within a week.

“The AG cited the Jagadambika Pal precedent to ask the governor to convene a special Assembly session and put two resolutions — one in the name of Sasikala and other in the name of Panneerselvam — to vote within a week,” sources said.

If convicted, Ms Sasikala will have to go to jail, and will not be allowed to contest elections for six years. She will be ineligible to be CM as India’s Constitution mandates election to the Assembly within six months of assuming office. Currently, Ms Sasikala is not a member of Tamil Nadu’s Assembly.

Each camp needs the support of 118 MLAs for a simple majority in the 234-member Assembly. Ms Sasikala has claimed the support of most of the party’s 134 MLAs. Twelve party MPs have backed the acting CM, but he has the support of only a “handful of MLAs”.

Ms Sasikala, a long-time aide of J. Jayalalithaa, broke down while meeting around 119 MLAs she has kept at a beach resort outside Chennai for a third straight day. She said she was a “cub” trained by “lioness” Jayalalithaa. “I have brought my clothes with me. I am staying with the MLAs,” she said.

Addressing party cadres earlier, Ms Sasikala called Mr Panneerselvam a “traitor” whose “designs of splitting the AIADMK” will never materialise. “I have seen 1000 such ‘Panneerselvams’,” she said.

On Monday, Mr Panneerselvam held discussions with the chief secretary, the home secretary and top officials, in his first visit to the state secretariat since he resigned.

Mr Panneerselvam and Ms Sasikala are fighting a succession war after then CM Jayalalithaa died of illness in December 2016. Mr Panneerselvam resigned for Ms Sasikala to be CM, but he dramatically revolted against her on Tuesday night, saying he was forced to quit.

Ms Sasikala is accused of colluding with then CM. Jayalalithaa to acquire illicit wealth worth Rs 66 crore. In 2003, the top court moved the case out of Tamil Nadu for a fair trial. Both were briefly jailed in 2014 before being acquitted. Karnataka filed an appeal against the acquittal. A bench of SC judges Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Amitav Roy had reserved its verdict in June last year.

In the 1998 Jagdambika Pal case, the apex court had ordered a floor test in the Assembly to determine who among the two claimants — Pal and Kalyan Singh — had the majority for chief ministership of Uttar Pradesh.