Welcome to this week’s Powertrip, a political newsletter exclusively curated for TNM and NL subscribers by Dhanya Rajendran, Shabbir Ahmed, Pooja Prasanna, and Nidheesh MK. This week we tell you why the Congress government in Karnataka has nothing to rejoice over a probe into irregularities in drug procurement during the COVID-19 pandemic by the previous BJP government. The Congress candidate for the Palakkad Assembly bye-poll seems to have been finalised with Shafi Parambil’s backing, in spite of murmurs against it from senior leaders. Tamil Nadu Deputy CM Udhayanidhi is heading the monsoon preparedness efforts, as the government looks to move away from the bad rap it got for mismanaging the previous year’s rains.