The News Minute | September 27, 2014 | 11.00 am ISTO. Panneerselvam fondly called by his colleagues as OPS is one of the most loyal persons in the inner ring of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). He is the currently the finance minister of Tamil Nadu and was also the former chief minister.Born in 1951 in Periakulam he was a farmer and ran a tea shop. He began his political career as a local leader in Periakulam and later got elected as the Chairman of Periakulam Municipality in 1996.In 2001 he contested the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections for the first time and won from the Periakulam constituency.A staunch loyalist of J. Jayalalithaa, the then revenue minister Panneerselvam was made the chief minister in September 2001 when Jayalalithaa’s appointment as the chief minister was quashed by the Supreme Court. That Jayalalithaa chose him to succeed her was a shock to many of the cabinet ministers. Panneerselvam himself was surprised. However, he was widely criticized for running a puppet government managed from the back by Jayalalithaa.In March 2002 after the Supreme Court overturned Jayalalithaa’s conviction Panneerselvam resigned and Jayalalithaa returned as the chief minister.After his party lost the 2006 assembly elections, and the DMK suspended most of the AIADMK members in the House, he was made the Leader of Opposition by Jayalalithaa.In 2012, as the finance minister of the state, he grabbed headlines when he prostrated before Jayalalithaa in the House just before presenting the annual budget. Opposition parties slammed him and Jayalalithaa for taking political sycophancy to an altogether different level.In that budget speech he also invoked the name “Amma,†as Jayalalithaa is fondly referred to by her followers, innumerable number of times.