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Year of living dangerously

The withdrawal of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam ministers from the Union council of ministers on Monday marked the culmination of a tenuous year-long relationship, AIADMK supremo J Jayalalitha had with the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership.

Strains in the relations between the two parties surfaced even before the ministry was formed with the AIADMK initially declining to join the Union Cabinet. She had then insisted that the finance portfolio be given to her ally, Janata Party president Dr Subramanian Swamy. However, this was not acceptable to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the BJP leadership.

External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh then arrived in Madras as Vajpayee's special emissary to successfully persuade her to join the government. But, thereafter, a series of skirmishes between Jayalalitha and the Vajpayee government marked the relationship between the two parties.

In September, Jayalalitha called Union Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani a security threat to the nation and said he was suffering from "selective amnesia" after he disclaimed knowledge of any pre-election assurance to Jayalalitha to dismiss the DMK government in Tamil Nadu.

Interestingly, Defence Minister George Fernandes, whose scalp she has demanded over the Admiral Bhagwat issue in return for her party's continued support, had met Jayalalitha as the prime minister's emissary on trouble-shooting missions.

Soon after the general election, Jayalalitha refused to submit the letter of support to Vajpayee when he called on President K R Narayanan, but relented after succeeding in incorporating, what she called, the "Tamil Nadu package" in the BJP-led coalition's national agenda for governance.

The AIADMK supremo threatened to withdraw support to the Vajpayee government on several occasions on various issues including the Cauvery water dispute. She insisted that the original draft scheme be incorporated into the new Cauvery accord worked out by the chief ministers of four riparian states.

On August 13 last year, a crucial meeting of the AIADMK and its allies authorised her to review support to the BJP-led government. However, the Pattali Makkal Katchi, the Marumalarchi DMK and the Tamizhaga Rajiv Congress, declared that they would support the government, even if the AIADMK pulled out of it. This led to the disbanding of the AIADMK-led front by Jayalalitha last December.

When the BJP fired the first salvo against the AIADMK by asking its nominee in the Cabinet Sedapatti R Muthiah to step down in the wake of a Madras court framing corruption charges against him, Jayalalitha hit back forcing the ouster of Communications minister Buta Singh from the Cabinet.

However, her demand for the removal of Commerce Minister Ramakrishna Hegde and Urban Development Minister Ram Jethmalani did not cut ice with Vajpayee.

The transfer of the then Enforcement Director Manas Kumar Bezbaruah to the Delhi Development Authority had caused a fresh rupture between the AIADMK and the government, with Jayalalitha alleging that a key member in the Prime Minister's Office had collected a hefty bribe from a newspaper baron, who was facing charges of foreign exchange violations.

This was after she was accused of having a hand in Bezbaruah's transfer to elude the foreign exchange violation filed against her associate Sasikala Natrajan and her family. The allegation was denied by the PMO. Pramod Mahajan, then the prime minister's political advisor and the apparent target of Jayalalitha's tirade, challenged her to name the person in the PMO. This prompted an angry retort from Jayalalitha who said she would not reply to "Tom, Dick and Harry."

In an apparent slight to Principal Secretary to the prime minister Brajesh Mishra, she made a minor official at the AIADMK headquarters reply when the PMO official asked her to furnish evidence to back up her charge.

The Centre's notification, transferring 46 cases of corruption against Jayalalitha and some of her erstwhile cabinet colleagues to other courts, punctuated her estrangement with the Centre, but only surfaced again on the Vishnu Bhagwat issue.

Jayalalitha had always claimed that the BJP had given her an unwritten assurance to dismiss the DMK government, which she said, had foisted cases against her to eliminate her politically.

In the latest incident, she questioned the Centre's double standards in keeping Defence Minister George Fernandes in the Union Cabinet, though Admiral Bhagwat had accused him of corruption while Sedapatti Muthiah was asked to quit on charges of corruption.

The flashpoint came when Jayalalitha visited Delhi on March 26 and met Congress chief Sonia Gandhi at the tea party hosted by Dr Subramanian Swamy on March 29.

"A real political earthquake has occurred now," she had then said about her meeting with Sonia, though she clarified it was in a lighter vein.

UNI

ALSO SEE:
The Tamil Nadu state page

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