Jayalalithaa has few admirers in Cong.

By A.Jayaram

BANGALORE, JULY 1. The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and AIADMK supremo, Ms. Jayalalithaa, has few admirers left in the State Congress or other political parties in Karnataka after the treatment she meted out to her arch political foe, Mr.M.Karunanidhi, on Saturday.

The DMK leader and former Chief Minister, has, in fact, gained many sympathisers and even fans in political circles in the State. The leaders of the BJP, the political ally of the DMK, have lost no time in demonstrating their protest against the manner in which Mr.Karunanidhi was arrested.

Some of the Congress leaders have in private strongly condemned Ms.Jayalalithaa's action. However, as their party is an ally of the AIADMK, they have capped their resentment and not spoken out. At least one leader who spoke on the condition of anonymity toldTHE HINDUthat Ms.Jayalalithaa had not treated their President, Ms.Sonia Gandhi, on level terms when it came to Tamil Nadu politics. Their party had no choice but accept whatever was doled out by the AIADMK.

It has been noted that the Chief Minister, Mr.S.M.Krishna, campaigned for only the Congress candidates and not those of the AIADMK and other allies during the Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu.

Political leaders in the State have always had their grouse against Ms.Jayalalithaa and her ways. An incident often talked of in official circles is the uncivil manner in which she treated the former Chief Minister, Mr.S.Bangarappa, during one of the Cauvery dispute talks held in Delhi. The Cauvery accord of August 1998 was signed when Mr.Karunanidhi was the Chief Minister. Ms.Jayalalithaa's repudiation of her Mysore lineage after she became Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for the first time, did not go well with many in Karnataka. There might be reason for her forgetting Mysore City. In 1972, when she was in filmdom and yet to enter electoral politics, she had been taken into police custody following a tiff with some local leaders.

During the agonising three and a half months wait for the release of the matinee idol, Mr. Rajkumar, from the clutches of the forest brigand, Veerappan, during July-November 2000, the Chief Minister, Mr.Krishna, and the Home Minister, Mr.Mallikarjun Kharge had established a good working relationship with Mr.Karunanidhi. There was, no doubt, the subdued criticism and even allegation by those outside the government that Mr.Karunanidhi was shielding Veerappan.

The politics of revanchism being witnessed in Tamil Nadu is somewhat alien to Karnataka. One case of political rivalry ending in revenge was the expulsion of Mr.Ramakrishna Hegde from the Janata Dal after Mr.H.D.Deve Gowda became the Prime Minister in 1996. The former Union Civil Aviation Minister, Mr.C.M.Ibrahim was also blamed for it. Though opposition political leaders were jailed by the Devaraj Urs government when Emergency was clamped in June 1975, it was at the behest of the Centre. Though the erstwhile Janata leaders levelled charges of corruption against Devaraj Urs and the Justice A.N.Grover Commission of inquiry was appointed, they had to take the support of many of the personal followers of Urs to come to power in 1983. The Janata government headed by Mr.Hegde consisted of the Karnataka Kranti Ranga MLAs who were earlier Congressmen and supporters of Devaraj Urs. Thus the two JD groups are strange amalgams of victims and supporters of the Emergency.

Though the State has witnessed bitter political animosities, there has been no parallels with Saturday's happenings in Chennai.

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