{"id":40537,"date":"2016-12-06T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-06T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/?p=40537"},"modified":"2016-12-06T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-06T08:00:00","slug":"sasikala-the-shadow-follows-could-be-gs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/sasikala-the-shadow-follows-could-be-gs\/","title":{"rendered":"Sasikala the shadow follows- Could be GS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">J Jayalalithaa&#8217;s close companion Sasikala Natarajan, always her faithful shadow, remained firmly by her side on Tuesday as lakhs streamed into a public hall in Chennai to pay their last respects to the four-time Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Sasikala&#8217;s family members flanked the body, not any leader of Jayalalithaa&#8217;s AIADMK or even her loyalist O Panneerselvam, who kept her photo on the dais as he took oath as Chief Minister late last night.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The dominating presence of Sasikala, in a black sari and red-rimmed eyes, was seen by many as symbolic of the power that the former video store owner enjoyed for decades as the other occupant of Jayalalithaa&#8217;s Poes Garden home in Chennai.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-40538\" src=\"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/The-complete-st127621.jpg\" alt=\"Sasikala the shadow follows- Could be GS \" width=\"670\" height=\"476\" srcset=\"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/The-complete-st127621.jpg 750w, https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/The-complete-st127621-240x172.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 670px) 100vw, 670px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Sasikala, 59, is emerging from the background as a key figure in Tamil Nadu politics. Sources say she or a person of her choice could take over as the general secretary of the party &#8211; essential for her to retain her grip on power.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But this part of the succession plan may not be as smooth as Panneerselvam&#8217;s appointment, for which party leaders projected a united front.Sasikala has never held a post either in the government or the party &#8211; and that is how Jayalalithaa kept it for three decades, even though she confided in her and relied on her for advice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>J Jayalalithaa&#8217;s close companion Sasikala Natarajan, always her faithful shadow, remained firmly by her side on Tuesday as lakhs streamed into a public hall in Chennai to pay their last respects to the four-time Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. Sasikala&#8217;s family members flanked the body, not any leader of Jayalalithaa&#8217;s AIADMK or even her loyalist [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40539,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[3168,450,3514,525,10563,18988,18986,18987,1524,18989],"class_list":["post-40537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politicalnews","category-top-stories","tag-aiadmk","tag-chennai","tag-chief-minister","tag-jayalalithaa","tag-panneerselvam","tag-poes-garden","tag-sasikala","tag-sasikala-natarajan","tag-tamil-nadu","tag-tamil-nadu-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/sasikala-jaya-pti.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greattelangaana.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}