Edappadi Karuppa Palaniswami (born 12 May 1954), often called EPS, is an Indian politician who is general secretary of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and Leader of the Opposition in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly. A farmer’s son from Salem district who joined the party as a village-level worker, he was Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu from February 2017 to May 2021, taking office in the turmoil that followed the death of J. Jayalalithaa and lasting, against most predictions, for a full four years.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Edappadi Karuppa Palaniswami |
| Born | 12 May 1954, Siluvampalayam, Edappadi, Salem district, Tamil Nadu |
| Age | 72 |
| Party | All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam |
| Offices | Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu (16 February 2017 – 6 May 2021); General Secretary, AIADMK (since 2023); Leader of the Opposition (since 2021) |
| Constituency | Edappadi |
| Spouse | Radha |
| Children | 1 son |
Early Life
Palaniswami was born into a farming family of the Gounder community at Siluvampalayam, a village near Edappadi. He studied science at a college in Erode without completing his degree, worked on the family’s land and traded in jaggery. He joined the AIADMK in 1974, two years after M. G. Ramachandran founded it, and became secretary of his village branch.
Political Career
Rise
When the party split after Ramachandran’s death he sided with Jayalalithaa and won the Edappadi seat in 1989 as a candidate of her faction; he held it in 1991. He was elected to the Lok Sabha from Tiruchengode in 1998, and lost several elections after that. He rose steadily in the organisation in Salem, a district that became his base. Returning to the Assembly in 2011, he was made Minister for Highways and Minor Ports, and in 2016 was also given public works, placing him among the senior members of Jayalalithaa’s cabinet.
Chief Minister
Jayalalithaa died in December 2016. Her aide V. K. Sasikala took control of the party and was about to become Chief Minister when the Supreme Court sent her to prison for corruption in February 2017; a group led by O. Panneerselvam had already rebelled. Sasikala chose Palaniswami. He was sworn in on 16 February and won a vote of confidence two days later amid uproar. Within months he had made peace with Panneerselvam, who became Deputy Chief Minister, and turned against Sasikala’s family.
His government survived by-elections and court challenges. Its record includes the revival of the old system of community maintenance of irrigation tanks, the declaration of the Cauvery delta as a protected agricultural zone in 2020, the creation of several new districts and medical colleges, and a 7.5 per cent quota in medical admissions for students of government schools. The gravest episode of his tenure came in May 2018, when police fired on demonstrators against the Sterlite copper plant at Thoothukudi and thirteen people were killed. Opponents also attacked him for supporting measures of the Union government.
Party leader
The AIADMK lost the election of 2021 with 66 seats, and he became Leader of the Opposition. The arrangement of dual leadership with Panneerselvam broke down; in July 2022 the party’s general council made Palaniswami its interim head and expelled his rival, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court in February 2023, and he was elected general secretary the following month.
He ended the alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party in September 2023; the party won no seat in the Lok Sabha election of 2024, and the alliance was restored in April 2025. In the Assembly election of April 2026, in which the new party of the actor Vijay won power and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam was pushed into second place, the AIADMK won 47 seats. Palaniswami retained Edappadi by more than 98,000 votes, the largest margin in the state, and continued as Leader of the Opposition.
Personal Life
He is married to Radha, and they have a son, Mithun. He still describes himself as a farmer and is often photographed in his fields at Siluvampalayam.
Featured image: Edappadi K. Palaniswami as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, February 2017. Photo by Prime Minister’s Office, licensed under Government Open Data License – India, via Wikimedia Commons.
