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Arunachalam may join Congress

N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras

Senior Tamil Maanila Congress leader and former Union minister M Arunachalam is likely to join the Congress party.

In which case, he is likely to contest his native Tenkasi (reserved) Lok Sabha seat on a Congress ticket, with support from the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham, Communist Party of India and Communist Party of India-Marxist allies of the party.

Arunachalam is reportedly hurt over the TMC leadership of G K Moopanar not taking his personal and political predicament into account while deciding to tie up with the dalit-strong Puthiya Thamizhagam of Dr K Krishnaswamy.

The new alliance meant that Arunachalam would lose his prime place as a dalit leader in the TMC front. More importantly, he would have to make space for Dr Krishnaswamy in the Tenkasi parliamentary seat.

While the TMC's predicament in having to align with the Puthiya Thamizhagam is understandable, not many in the party seem sympathetic to Arunachalam's plight.

"We have nothing against Arunachalam continuing as a senior party leader and also member of the high-powered political affairs committee of the TMC," says a party source. "But even without the PT alliance, there would have been opposition to his being given the Tenkasi seat."

As this leader points out, Arunachalam had been a Union minister for 16 of the previous 18 years, but for the 1989-91 period when the Janata Dal-National Front was in power. "He was a minister of state under successive Congress governments, from Indira Gandhi to Rajiv Gandhi to P V Narasimha Rao, and a Cabinet minister under the United Front regimes of H D Deve Gowda and I K Gujral. Yet, he managed to lose his native constituency by a whopping margin of 75,000 votes in the 1998 elections."

According to TMC sources, Arunachalam was among the few party MPs from Tamil Nadu "who had done precious little for their constituencies. As a minister at the Centre for 16 years, with industrial production as his portfolio for a term, he could have done much for the industrialisation of his constituency, and for creating more jobs, in the entire state. But nothing of the kind happened."

A party leader from Tenkasi adds, "Arunachalam also alienated himself from his constituents over successive elections, so much so when in all other constituencies, the nominees of the infant TMC-Dravida Munnetra Kazagham alliance were getting roaring welcome in the 'anti-Jaya' elections of 1996, Arunachalam alone was being gheraoed and boycotted by his voters in dalit villages. If he won despite that, it was only because of the 'anti-Jayalalitha wave' of the time. And at the next available opportunity, he was voted out."

Arunachalam's supporters refuse to buy this argument. As one of them points out, "Three of the four TMC ministers at the Centre lost the Lok Sabha elections last year. Only P Chidambaram could retain his Sivaganga seat, that too by a reduced margin of 75,000 votes." They not only blame it on the Coimbatore serial blasts, which "swept the DMK-TMC alliance out of its feet in the state", but on Dr Krishnaswamy who had polled 110,000.

TMC sources argue that the party had little choice but to accommodate the Puthiya Thamizhagam "in our alliance, particularly after the Congress opted for the AIADMK".

However, they claim that the PT would have been a surer ally had the Congress and the TMC come together, and cite Dr Krishnaswamy's earlier media interviews in this context.

"Certain sacrifices had to be made in the larger interest of the party, its long-term goals and strategies. And as a state-wide leader with wider acceptance, Arunachalam could still contest any of the 38 other Lok Sabha seats in the state, including the six reserved constituencies," says a senior leader.

With this, he also reduces Arunachalam's claims for leading at least the TMC segment of the dalits in the state, into a fight over a single constituency.

Lately, Arunachalam has been staying away from TMC affairs, including the crucial PAC meetings, where alliance issues came to be discussed and decided upon. His name had cropped up as a prospective candidate for crossing over to the Congress side, every time such a prospect presented itself.

The rumours became increasingly louder when a Congress-AIADMK tie-up became near-inevitable -- and he did not exactly deny them.

A former TMC member of Parliament says, "Despite his long innings, both as a Lok Sabha member and Union minister, Arunachalam lacks self-confidence. Even now he wanted the Congress-AIADMK prop for contesting the Lok Sabha elections, and was among the few leaders who wanted such an alliance."

Against this, says the former MP, "leaders like Chidambaram, who stood a better chance of winning their Lok Sabha seats, and also a possible place in national politics, in the company of either the DMK or the AIADMK, are ready to risk their political future by standing by principles. This has won the respect of the party cadres and the public alike, despite Chidambaram being seen as a 'not-so-approachable' leader."

If, however, Arunachalam is still waiting in the wings, it is mainly because of the Congress not having convinced the AIADMK about the desirability of allotting the Tenkasi seat for the party, for the former minister to contest.

The AIADMK made a breakthrough in what was traditionally a 'Congress bastion' in 1998 when its nominee Paramasivam defeated Arunachalam.

"For us, it's a key constituency, we having expanded our area of influence in the traditionally strong southern districts," explains an AIADMK leader.

The temptation for AIADMK chief J Jayalalitha to allot the Tenkasi seat for the Congress, so that Arunachalam could breakaway from the anti-Jaya TMC and Moopanar are too much.

"But then, the Congress has to convince former bureaucrat V Selvaraj, who enthusiastically contested the seat, both in 1996 and 1998, and even polled a very respectable 75,000 votes by the party's standard," says a state Congress functionary.

"Worse still, Arunachalam should be ready to eat the humble pie, he having loudly protested Jayalalitha throwing him out of the state government aircraft, when she was the chief minister, and he, a Cabinet minister at the Centre."

And that -- as also the jibes he would have to face from the TMC campaigners on this count -- is what seems to be holding back Arunachalam, if not the possibility of his getting the Congress ticket. Even if momentarily.

And despite all this, the impact of Arunachalam quitting the TMC, if it came to that, on the party's standing, cannot be under-estimated. Nor can his possible charges of the Moopanar leadership ''underwriting, justifying and covering up the violence-prone PT'', be explained away convincingly.

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