Pannnerselvam could not go beyond nine MLAs (out of the 134) and could only helplessly complain to the Governor that as long as the 120 MLAs were confined to the resort under protection of bouncers, he could not eject anyone out. The trickle which he hoped would become a tsunami never happened as the bulk of MLAs remained bottled up in the resort. “If OPS was short by 30 MLAs, the stragglers from the Sasikala camp would have joined him. But he was short by more than 100 MLAs, that left little room for hope. Even the DMK, with 89 MLAs could have propped him up if he showed at least 30 MLAs behind him, but he failed even on that count,” says Prof Ramu Manivannan, HoD of political science, University of Madras.