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N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras
With the ruling All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee resorting to a slanging match, fresh doubts have arisen over the durability of the revived alliance in the state.
The issue has assumed significance as the AIADMK needs the Congress during the upcoming session of Parliament, where the National Democratic Alliance will be pressing the Centre to take action against the Jayalalitha government on Karunanidhi's arrest.
Trouble started with state Congress president E V K S Elangovan debunking all "Dravidian parties" and asserting an eagerness to restore "Kamaraj rule" in the state.
The AIADMK was provoked, with party secretary K A Sengottaiyan losing no time in declaring that he would work for Elangovan's removal as the TNCC president. The Congress retorted that it was an internal matter of the party.
What has irked state Congress leaders, who otherwise want Elangovan removed, is Sengottaiyan's pointed accusation that party president Sonia Gandhi could not use the one opportunity she had for becoming the prime minister, which was provided by Jayalalitha when she withdrew support to the second Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 1999.
Sengottaiyan also declared that the "rusted Congress outfit" survives in the state only because of the AIADMK and "Amma" Jayalalitha.
The AIADMK line has been publicly adopted by Congress secretary and Gandhi's aide Mani Shankar Aiyar. Talking to reporters after calling on Jayalalitha on Tuesday, not only did Aiyar share the AIADMK's views on Elangovan, he also conceded that the Congress was too weak to aspire for anything in the state.
But not everyone agrees with Aiyar. A senior Congress leader remarked, "The ruling party seems to be taking the Congress for granted, thinking that the anti-BJP compulsions of the high command would force it to turn a blind eye to the state events.
"It's time we had a fresh look and delineated national issues from petty political considerations of the electoral kind."
In this context, this leader referred to the Congress's support to the Centre's line on the Agra summit talks.
"Likewise, we have to take a pointed decision on the larger issues involved in the arrests of DMK president M Karunanidhi and the two Union ministers, Murasoli Maran and T R Baalu," he says.
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