Thiruvananthapuram: This year marks the fortieth anniversary of Tamil matinee idol, cultural icon and Dravidian politician M.G. Ramachandran, better known as MGR, becoming the first film superstar to become chief minister of an Indian state.

Four decades down the line, politics in southern India’s Tamil Nadu state continues to play out with all the spicy ingredients of an Indian movie, complete with a huge cast of players, minute-to-minute action and replete with heroes and heroines.

The political storyline has become as bizarre as any from a movie: MGR was succeeded by his wife, Janaki Ramachandran, and later by his heroine Jayalalitha Jayaram, and the script is just a breath away from the heroine’s disciple and companion rolled into one, Sasikala Natarajan, also likely to ascend the chief ministerial chair.

Just before that, however, a twist in the tale happened this week, when the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s (AIADMK ‘s) loyal member and two-time replacement for Jayalalitha as chief minister, O. Panneerselvam revolted against Sasikala.

All of this week’s confusion has everything to do with the fact that Jayalalitha did not name a successor when she was admitted to hospital in September 2016, and died of a cardiac arrest on December 5.

She had stormed back to power in May 2016, changing the traditional course in Tamil Nadu politics where the AIADMK and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) come to power alternately after every five years. In 2016, the AIADMK bagged 134 seats in the 234-member House, comfortably more than the 89 for the DMK.

The 2016 election marked a back-to-back victory for AIADMK, but its leader did not have the fortune to enjoy a decade-long stint in power. Panneerselvam the loyalist was once again back in the chief minister’s role, biding time for his leader to come back to good health, but here the script changed again, this time in catastrophic fashion when she lost her life.

Since then it has been a contest between Sasikala and OPS, as Panneerselvam is known in the AIADMK ranks, as to who should rightfully succeed Jayalalitha. OPS appeared to have blinked first when Sasikala called a hurriedly-scheduled meeting of MLAs and got herself elected as the legislature party chief of the party in addition to the general secretary post she had managed a few days earlier.

Outsmarted and humiliated, OPS put in his resignation but the Tamil Nadu chief minister C. Vidyasagar Rao gave the hint that he would rather wait for the verdict in a crucial court case against Sasikala to be settled next week before swearing in Sasikala as the next CM.

OPS used that window of opportunity to make a dramatic visit to Jayalalitha’s tomb, shed tears in public, and announced that he had been humiliated, forced to resign, and that he would consider the withdrawal of his resignation.

Sasikala has been quick to the draw, too, expelling OPS from the party treasurer’s post and recalling that OPS had been in the Janaki Ramachandran camp that was opposed to Jayalalitha immediately after MGR’s death.

Sasikala claims to have the support of as many as 131 MLAs, which is sufficient for the AIADMK to stay in power, but OPS supporters feel that the claim is highly exaggerated. Observers feel a split in the party is imminent, and some feel that the situation is just ripe for the Bharatiya Janata Party to get a foothold in Tamil Nadu, aligning with any of the splintered factions of the AIADMK.

Meanwhile, the opposition DMK also has reason to be optimistic. With 89 seats, it is possible for the party to engineer a political coup if the ruling party breaks into fragments.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission has also entered the Tamil Nadu’s puzzling political scenario, wanting to know how Sasiskala could be the general secretary of her party without being its ordinary member for five years at a stretch.

Despite having caused the latest jitters, OPS apparently is not yet considered a front-runner in the race for power. One social media meme likened OPS and the computer UPS, saying both work only when the main source of power is out.

Political observers say that the assessment is unfair to a man who managed to control the jallikattu-related demonstrations and handled Chennai’s recent water crisis reasonably well.

But who will emerge the winner from Tamil Nadu’s muddy political waters? Sasikala, OPS or MK Stalin of the DMK? It is evolving into an edge-of-the-seat entertainer, quite like a Tamil super-hit movie.