ELECTION 99
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Jaya meets Moopanar

All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham general secretary J Jayalalitha today met Tamil Maanila Congress president G K Moopanar after a ten-year break in a move seen as an attempt to consolidate the anti-Dravida Munnetra Kazagham-Bharatiya Janata Party forces in Tamil Nadu.

Jayalalitha called on Moopanar at his residence where he is convalescing after an angioplasty.

She described the meeting as a courtesy call as she heard that Moopanar was not keeping good health.

Asked about the political significance of the meeting, Jayalalitha told waiting reporters after her 40-minute meeting that it was for the media to draw inferences.

To a question whether they (Jayalalitha and Moopanar) were now friends, she said, ''We were never enemies.'' There had been a communication gap which had now now been rectified, she added.

Moopanar and Jayalalitha had a face-to-face meeting in 1989 when the former called on the latter at a private hospital where she was admitted after she was attacked in the state assembly.

While Jayalalitha had aligned with the Congress and the Left parties to fight the recent Lok Sabha election in the state, Moopanar floated a third front that opposed both communalism and corruption.

While the TMC drew a blank, the AIADMK-led combine secured 14 seats as against the 30 it had won in the 1998 poll.

Jayalalitha had favoured the TMC to be in the front led by the AIADMK. Later, in a post-election briefing, she had indicated that had the TMC also been in the front, they would have won more seats.

Asked whether today's meeting was a prelude to the changing political equations in the state, Jayalalitha smiled.

The meeting is significant as the TN assembly elections are due in March 2001. Jayalalitha had been claiming that the assembly elections would be advanced by the DMK government.

The TMC was an ally of the DMK during the 1996 and 1998 elections in Tamil Nadu.

UNI

Tell us what you think of this report