Electing Jayalalitha as CM ethically improper: BJP

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MAY 8. The election of Ms. J. Jayalalitha as the leader of the alliance and Chief Minister, in the event of the AIADMK-led alliance winning the elections in Tamil Nadu, would be a ``constitutional and ethical impropriety,'' Mr. M. Venkaiah Naidu, Minister for Rural Development, said here today on return from a 10-day election campaign in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Pondicherry.

Mr. Naidu also charged that Ms. Jayalalitha had deliberately made sure of her disqualification in the elections (hoping for a sympathy factor to come into play) by filing her nomination papers from four constituencies. If she had not been disqualified because she stood convicted, surely she would have known that filing her nomination papers from four constituencies would have struck her off the list of candidates.

Hitting out at the Congress Party and the CPI(M) especially, Mr. Naidu said he was amazed at the ``lowest depths'' to which these parties had fallen ``just to gain some perceived temporary political advantage.'' They were publicly approving the idea of Ms. Jayalalitha as Chief Minister when she stood convicted in a corruption case and had been disqualified from the election race.

By doing this, these parties had ``forfeited their right to talk about probity and honesty in public life,'' Mr. Naidu added.

But when some members of the press tried to ask Mr. Naidu about the ``political propriety'' of the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister refusing to ``correct'' the defective notification in relation to the Babri Masjid demolition case, Mr. Naidu's response was ``there was no need to go on about Babri, Babri, Babri.''

As for Ms. Jayalalitha's claim that the people will decide her fate and also vote on the ``false charges'' foisted on her by the DMK government, Mr. Naidu suddenly gave the go-by to the BJP's own decade-long faith in the ``people's court.'' Instead he said: ``if guilt and innocence is to be decided by the people through a vote, then what is the need of courts?''

However, earlier when Mr. L.K.Advani, Mr. Yashwant Sinha, Mr. Madan Lal Khurana, and some other senior BJP leaders were facing charges in the Jain-hawala case, the BJP had always talked about the final decision in the ``people's court.''

The AIADMK-led alliance, according to the BJP, was full of contradictions. The Congress Party president, Ms. Sonia Gandhi stayed away from the campaign ``because in the AIADMK, there is only ``insultation, not consultation, among partners,'' Mr. Naidu said.

And finally, the strongest point for the BJP was that in all the five States going to polls put together the party had ``only eight sitting MLAs in a total of 824 Assembly segments, and the BJP was going to increase its strength manifold.''

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