ELECTIONS '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

Jaya sends a clear message to BJP

The Constitution ordains that a minister shall hold office during the pleasure of the President of India. All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham general secretary J Jayalalitha decrees that R K Kumar has lost her pleasure to continue as the Union minister of state for revenue and banking. And he goes.

With Kumar's resignation, citing health reasons, at her instance, Jayalalitha has sent out a clear signal to the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee that she has not lost her political leverage despite their Pokhran-II induced popularity.

She wants an early reshuffle of the Union ministry as promised by Vajpayee and as publicised by her and, more importantly, the dismissal of the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham government in Tamil Nadu.

It is a veiled threat to the Vajpayee leadership that the AIADMK might reconsider its support to the BJP-led government during the crucial Budget session of Parliament if the DMK government was not dismissed in the coming weeks.

The AIADMK has a tentative deadline of June 10, if only to scuttle the Rajya Sabha polls slated for June 18, where all the six seats will go to the DMK-Tamil Maanila Congress combine at the cost of the AIADMK.

The Madras high court is also expected to delivery its delayed verdict on a petition against the constitution of special courts to try Jayalalitha and her erstwhile ministerial aides while in power.

If it goes against her, in the light of the Supreme Court upholding similar special courts in Sikkim last fortnight, it could mean speedy trial on a day-to-day basis, and early verdict.

If Jayalalitha were to be convicted in any of the handful of cases pending against her, it could mean a new slump in the revitalised popularity of the AIADMK. More importantly, in certain cases, an adverse verdict could bar Jayalalitha from contesting elections for six years. That would end her hopes of returning to power in the near future.

Jayalalitha is also peeved that the BJP has not taken her as seriously as she would like. Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Jaswant Singh, the BJP's 'minister for Jayalalitha affairs' with Cabinet rank, is busy on the Pokhran front, and Vajpayee does not mention Cabinet reshuffle any more.

Not only would it explode her myth of being 'all powerful' before party cadres, it would also embolden her critics within the ruling coalition like Commerce Minister Ramakrishna Hegde and Urban Development Minister Ram Jethmalani and friends of the DMK like Surjeet Singh Barnala and George Fernandes.

Jayalalitha feels stiffled. Kumar was unable to deliver the goods, despite her banking on him. Her cases with the income-tax department, and those of her aide Sasikala Natarajan and family with the Enforcement Directorate and the like, stand where they were before the BJP and Kumar took over.

Other than creating an avoidable controversy over the transfer of income tax commissioners, Kumar could not do anything. Even there, the new man at Madras has not taken over.

Kumar could not even stop the public sector Indian Bank from sacking Sucharita, Jayalalitha's schoolmate, who allegedly took illegal steps to help the Natarajan family as the manager of the Alwarpet branch in Madras, last fortnight.

Jayalalitha has been pushed to the wall, despite the numbers she has in Parliament, and the number she thinks she won for the BJP and allies in Tamil Nadu.

The Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazagham has always been a suspect, and even the Pattali Makkal Katctchi has started thinking on its own. PMK MPs did not accompany the AIADMK delegation to meet the prime minister earlier this week, despite contrary indications.

Jayalalitha, hence, is reacting the way she alone would react for a person pushed to the wall. Without hitting at the BJP leadership directly, she is sending out an indirect message through Kumar's resignation: that no one is indispensable in her scheme of things other than her own self. And the AIADMK executive, meeting in Madras on Monday, May 25, is expected to take the crucial decision.

Jayalalitha had launched a 'trial balloon' in Sedapatti R Muthiah, who had resigned as Union surface transport minister last month after a Madras court framed charges against him.

She pretty well knew that the man was facing a criminal case, and that a chargesheet was pending. For one thing, she was rewarding a loyalist from the immediate past, one of the every few senior aides from her days as chief minister who was still on her side whole-heartedly -- and active in her cause.

But she was also testing the waters, as to how far the BJP would leadership would go in standing by her and her decisions. Vajpayee did some plain-speaking to her, and once a Madras court framed charges against Muthiah, he was out the very next day.

Today, the AIADMK has only two ministers at the Centre, in the place of the original four -- and the promised five. Between them, Union Law and Company Affairs Minister M Thambidurai and Minister of State for Personnel R Janarthanam share the burdens of the four, and the government would look a laughing stock in Parliament when it meets. The three resignations -- those of Buta Singh, Muthaiah and Kumar -- could cloud Pokhran-II, if the new ministers are not inducted in time.

For all this, however, the BJP too seems to have done its homework. The additional charge of parliamentary affairs, with Kumar, has gone to a BJP minister. The party leadership is in no mood to yield further ground to the AIADMK. Fresh polls, if any, will be blamed on her. The benefits may be theirs.

There are already wishpers of discontent in the AIADMK and its parliamentary wing. The AIADMK is a monolith under the charismatic pull of its leader -- a public impression which Jayalalitha has further nurtured in the post-poll days. Yet, eight of her 15 Rajya Sabha members deserted Jayalalitha and crossed the floor when she was in the dog-house in 1996. She did not have any Lok Sabha members then. Jayalalitha is also aware of this, and Kumar's 'resignation drama' is also a veiled notice to her MPs to behave, or else…

The BJP is against the dismissal of the DMK state government as a matter of principle. It also has the 'pro-active image' of President K R Narayanan and the 'Bommai case verdict' of the Supreme Court to stand by. Party strategists have also studied the pending cases against Jayalalitha, and seem to have concluded that she may be a greater burden than thought to be. They are looking around for new allies, and Jayalalitha wants to strike before they succeed lest she should become irrelevant.

Jayalalitha is also not the one to brook 'nonsense'. If her aides were doing business with big industrial houses, it should only be for her -- and with her knowledge and consent. At the same time, she is not the one to have some industrial group or any other holding an 'I-owe-you' card from her, in their favour.

As is known, at the height of the 1991election campaign, when the victory of the AIADMK-Congress campaign was near-certain even before the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, Jayalalitha had turned down the 'help' offered by many industrial houses, from Bombay and Delhi. She chose her friends from native Tamil Nadu, where she would be in control of them.

In the case of bigger business houses not based in the state, the reverse would have been true. Given their greater clout at Delhi, these business groups would have dictated terms to her, instead.

And through Kumar's 'resignation', she has shown who is the boss, even though his own association with a Bombay-based business group had preceded his association with the AIADMK supremo, and was one more reason for his losing her pleasure.

Tell us what you think of this report