Welcome to this week’s Powertrip, a weekly political newsletter exclusively curated for The News Minute and Newslaundry subscribers. This week’s edition is by Dhanya Rajendran, Shabbir Ahmed, and Pooja Prasanna.

This week, we track how the results of these elections mark the end of regional parties’ Deve Gowda-like ambitions and put the Congress back as the fulcrum of anti-Modi politics. 

We then look at the immediate political fallout of the Tamil Nadu elections, beginning with the scaling down of operations at the DMK’s powerful political strategy unit, PEN, headed by MK Stalin’s son-in-law Sabareesan. Contracts have ceased, and there is a demand to shut down the unit. 

We move on to how the Congress is preparing not just to support Vijay’s TVK, but also to actively help the party stitch together the numbers needed to form the government. Meanwhile, unrest is brewing within the AIADMK against Edappadi Palaniswami, fuelling speculation over MLAs possibly drifting towards TVK.

And finally, in Kerala, the Congress has already entered an intense battle over who the CM will be, with KC Venugopal and VD Satheesan emerging as the two key contenders.

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