File picture of Jayalalithaa with O Panneerselvam, a staunch loyalist who as finance minister would paste her picture on his briefcase containing the budget papers and touch the tyres of her campaign vehicles in obeisance

Chennai, Sept. 28: If one avowed ex-chaiwallah has ascended the hot seat in Delhi, another today got ready to assume Tamil Nadu’s chief ministership.

O. Panneerselvam, who owned a tea stall now run by his brother’s family in Periyakulam town, was invited to form the government after being elected AIADMK legislature party leader this evening.

One doesn’t need to be able to read the tealeaves, though, to know that the Tamil Nadu government would now be run from a jail cell in Bangalore.

The chief minister’s post fell vacant after Jayalalithaa was convicted in a corruption case yesterday and handed a four-year sentence in the Karnataka capital. Already a plan is brewing to keep her in the loop.

Rajya Sabha member and former advocate-general A. Navaneethakrishnan would be the party’s point man in Bangalore and relay Amma’s orders to Panneerselvam, a senior minister said.

Still, the man the party knows as “OP” faces a tougher challenge compared with his previous stint in the chair.

Panneerselvam, 62, had briefly served as a rubber-stamp chief minister from September 2001 till March 2002 after the Supreme Court had unseated Jayalalithaa over a prior conviction. Amma had then continued to run the government from her Chennai bungalow, which OP would visit daily to take his orders.

Such complete subservience will now be difficult, though, with Jayalalithaa locked up hundreds of miles away.

More crucially, Panneerselvam has now to pilot the government with just a year and a half left before the Assembly elections. In 2001, he had assumed the top job just four months after an AIADMK government had come to power.

An unsmiling Panneerselvam today told his party colleagues that he was accepting the job with a heavy heart and would feel relieved only when Amma returned to reclaim her rightful position.

“For us, Amma will always remain our permanent chief minister,” he said emotionally.

Panneerselvam, the party treasurer and till now the state finance minister, had joined the AIADMK because of his admiration for M.G. Ramachandran, an actor who founded the party and mentored Jayalalithaa.

When Amma picked him over more experienced ministers to fill in for her in 2001, the crucial factor had been his unquestioned loyalty and his origins in the powerful Thevar community.