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Rejection of fresh demands forced Jaya's hand

Amberish K Diwanji in New Delhi

That All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary J Jayalalitha had an uneasy relationship with the Bharatiya Janata Party was known. The two biggest partners in the ruling coalition were bickering ever since they and 12 other parties formed the government. Yet they always managed to patch up and move on. Thus it was that the alliance completed a year in office, marked by a gala function in New Delhi.

Things had never seemed better when, suddenly, Jayalalitha began breathing fire again. This time things rapidly reached such a pass that she ordered her two representatives in the Union Council of Ministers to resign.

Everyone is now waiting with bated breath to see when -- or if -- she informs the President that her 18 MPs are no longer supporting the alliance. In that event, the BJP-led alliance, which has been surviving with a wafer-thin majority, may well be out of power.

The latest crisis was sparked when Jayalalitha joined the Congress in demanding an inquiry by a joint parliamentary committee into the dismissal of Vishnu Bhagwat as navy chief.

The BJP has consistently refused to heed the demand on the plea that a JPC will not be in the interest of national security.

Jayalalitha then upped the ante by demanding that Defence Minister George Fernandes be shunted off to another ministry and Bhagwat be reinstated. Both were rejected.

But a senior BJP politician has now revealed the sequence of events that preceded the very public spat. "The Bhagwat issue is just a fig leaf," he said. "Her demands were the same, but there were some new ones and it was the BJP's inability to accede to her latest demands that broke the camel's back."

Ever since Jayalalitha's party joined the central government, she has consistently demanded that the DMK government in Tamil Nadu be dismissed. The BJP has avoided doing so on the plea that such action would not find favour with the President and Parliament.

"Then, a few months ago, she made two fresh demands. First, she insisted that the Rajya Sabha elections be postponed and that DMK chief and Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi be investigated for some criminal cases," said the politician.

The Rajya Sabha election was particularly crucial since it is the Tamil Nadu assembly, which is completely dominated by the DMK, which will elect the members. "Many of the outgoing members are from the AIADMK and are certain to be replaced by DMK men. But the BJP pointed out that the Rajya Sabha elections are mandated by the Constitution and conducted by the Election Commission of India and there is nothing anyone can do about them," the politician added.

The BJP apparently agreed to initiate an inquiry against Karunanidhi, but asked Jayalalitha to make specific charges. That, she was unable to do, and her vague statements amounted to nothing more than some civil cases. The BJP pointed out that since she had no criminal charge that could stand in court, it was not possible to seek an inquiry.

"But Jayalalitha felt she was being slighted. We think that at this stage she made up her mind to quit," said the source.

He added that Jayalalitha tried to rope in Trinamul Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, telling her the government was certain to collapse and she must support an alternative. But the Bengali politician decided to stay put, since the alternative would be to cohabit with the Left.

"When Jayalalitha first came to Delhi, she was not sure how the Congress leadership would receive her. That is why she declared after a co-ordination committee meeting that while she had put forth her demands (on the Bhagwat issue) it was for the Cabinet to decide. But after her successful meeting with Sonia Gandhi, she suddenly went on the offensive and refused to heed our pleas," the source added.

But by then Banerjee had spilled the beans on Jayalalitha's talk with her to the other partners, infuriating the BJP, which decided enough was enough and she must go. "We decided that this time we would not accept any of her demands. Anyway, she had already decided to leave, so what purpose would it have served except for her to make more unreasonable demands," he explained.

The last straw did break the alliance, but it seems to have given back the BJP its self-respect.

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