A few years ago, this group of middle-aged men in white shirts and veshtis knew exactly where to stand. Standing on the footpath along Rajaji Salai which leads to Fort St George—where Tamil Nadu’s state Assembly functions–they would wait patiently: all for half a glance from their leader J Jayalalithaa as she zipped past in her convoy. As Aneesha Bangera, a Bengaluru-based freelance writer who travels to Chennai often, puts it: “If I didn’t care too much about politics, I could easily get by not knowing who the chief minister of Karnataka is. In Tamil Nadu, there is no escaping when Jayalalithaa is in power.”

When in power, Jayalalithaa made her larger-than-life presence felt, whether you liked it not. From flex banners spaced every few metres on arterials roads to water bottles, cement bags and even wallpapers of laptops that the government gave away, her smile was inescapable. From glitzy metro rail stations to sleepy villages to national highways—she made sure her image reached every corner of the state.

With the state losing two of its stalwarts in quick succession and the subsequent infighting within the governing All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the running joke is that the state doesn’t know who the CM is. After a bitter rivalry that lasted decades, M Karunanidhi and J Jayalalithaa died within 20 months of each other. The void they left behind seemed too big for anyone to fill. As the state goes in to its first elections without them in several decades, there seems to be far too many voices fighting for power than what the average Tamil voter is used to.

Jayalalithaa was the central driver to the AIADMK’s politics till the day she was admitted in hospital on September 23, 2016. She set the tone, the issues the party worried about, and who the party allied with or made enemies with. With her missing, two differing voices from AIADMK seem to emerge. While Edappadi K Palaniswami, the current chief minister, is toeing the Modi line and talking about national security, O Paneerselvam, the deputy CM and the go-to CM whenever Jayalalithaa had to go to jail, seems to be invoking “Amma” a lot more in his speeches—”mother”, the honorific that was used, and is still used, to refer to Jayalalithaa.

Karthik Nagappan, a branding expert, says the party has lost clarity and is not effectively using the legacy and branding that Jayalalithaa left behind. “There is no unified communication strategy. What the party speaks is fragmented through caste and communities. Combine this allying with people like Anbumani Ramadoss, who till recently was talking against AIADMK, the confusion and lack of confidence becomes clearer. Clear, consistent communication is key in reaching out to the people.”

An young urbanite might find Jayalalithaa’s imagery all over the city over the top, or even off-putting. However, she knew what works with the masses and did not shy away from putting her photo on every street corner, and on every product that the government sold. Photos of men prostrating in front of her were common and she allowed and even encouraged this sycophancy. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, on the other hand, more prominently uses its symbol, “the rising sun”, and its party colours—red and black.

Historically, the DMK is considered an ideologically-driven party while the AIADMK is driven by an individual’s charisma. While the DMK allowed for different voices to emerge, the AIADMK dependent solely on its leader, whether it was MG Ramachandran or Jayalalithaa. Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa had distinct ways of reaching to the people, says celebrated writer Vaasanthi, who wrote a biography of Jayalalithaa titled Amma: Jayalalithaa’s Journey From Movie Star To Political Queen. While Karunanidhi was a great orator, Jayalalithaa’s speeches were actually boring, she says. “But she could connect with the masses and spoke directly to them. Her party cadres weren’t important to her. Whereas Karunanidhi kept mentioning his party cadres as his ‘en uyirinum melana udanpirappugale (my beloved brethren who are dearer to me than my life)’.”

Several of his speeches started with this, sending crowds into a frenzy. Jayalalithaa reserved the phrase “udanpiravaa sagodhari” meaning “sister not related through blood” only for her friend and loyal aide Sasikala.

From long convoys that brought Chennai to a stop to a deluge of defamation cases against journalists and fellow politicians, Jayalalithaa wanted to portray herself as a strong-willed administrator with an iron grip on her party. She branded herself as a wronged woman or the Panchali who was wronged by the Kauravas. She wouldn’t allow anyone to distort the narrative she wanted to set for herself. “Unhappy with our coverage of the corruption charges against her as well as the implementation of several schemes and projects, she sent police teams to our office in a bid to arrest reports and as a way of intimidation. For several days, we couldn’t step out of our office without having a policeman closely watching and following us,” says a journalist who was with The Hindu at that time. He didn’t want to be named.

Jayalalithaa lost badly in the 2004 parliamentary elections and the 2006 state Assembly elections. But she learnt from this during the subsequent period of hibernation which lasted till she came back to power in 2011. “She reemerged and completely transformed as a benevolent mother,” Vaasanthi says, adding that she knew Karunanidhi wasn’t popular amongst women voters. “That was a clever strategy that still lasts, despite being convicted by the Supreme Court in the disproportionate assets case.”

Meanwhile, the DMK is cashing in on the lack of a clear voice from the AIADMK. Following Jayalalithaa’s death in 2016, the DMK’s MK Stalin reportedly hired a private firm for an “image-building process” for him. The Hindu had reported: “The email transcripts between OMG (a private firm) and a management consulting firm show that elaborate plans were discussed to promote ‘Brand Thalapathy’ during the historic and apolitical jallikattu protests.”

As MK Stalin campaigns across the state, the DMK seems to have found a singular voice. Meanwhile, the AIADMK lost its voice in December 2016 and never found it. With the model code of conduct in place, Jayalalithaa’s images are now only found in the translucent front shirt pockets of her party members and loyal supporters.