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Ministerial impropriety

MS. JAYALALITHAA'S ANTI-LTTE drive — which has resulted in a slew of arrests under POTA over the last three weeks — has assumed a new significant dimension. Her demand that the MDMK leader, M. Kannappan, be dropped from the Union Council of Ministers transports the support-for-LTTE issue squarely into the lap of the Vajpayee Government. In her letter to the Prime Minister, Ms. Jayalalithaa makes two points simply and forcefully. First, that Mr. Vajpayee's Minister of State for Non-Conventional Energy is an open supporter of the LTTE, a banned organisation. Second, that his speeches at various public meeting in recent times constitute an offence under Section 21 of POTA, the very provision which has been invoked to arrest other LTTE sympathisers such as the MDMK leader, Vaiko, and the Tamil Nationalist Movement leader, P. Nedumaran.

In a strictly formal sense, Ms. Jayalalithaa's demand for the ouster of Mr. Kannappan may not have a legal or constitutional basis. But the grounds on which such a demand is raised cannot be dismissed lightly. Union Ministers are expected to lay down and enforce the law. They are not expected to express their support or sympathy for organisations that have been specifically outlawed, particularly one as dangerous and odious as the LTTE. Mr. Kannappan appears to have missed this point completely when he clarified that his and his party's support for the LTTE is only in the nature of "moral support". As a Union Minister, he ought to have understood that any kind of support for a banned organisation is not permissible. Moreover, that he cannot allow his ideology (warped as it is on issues such as the LTTE and Tamil nationalism) to take precedence over the law of the land.

The basic truth of this completely overrides and remains unaffected by the other issues which Ms. Jayalalithaa's anti-LTTE drive has raised. These include reservations about the use of POTA — a piece of legislation which undoubtedly contains a number of harsh provisions which are liable to misuse. They also include opposition allegations about the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister's motives for launching such a high-profile anti-LTTE drive — the point here being that actions deserve to be judged on their merit, not examined purely in terms of possible motive. Mr. Vajpayee's Government may choose to ignore Ms. Jayalalithaa's missive, but the chances are that this is not the last it will be hearing on this issue. One part of the Tamil Nadu's Chief Minister's charge against Mr. Kannappan is explicit and clear-cut (namely, that he has allegedly committed an offence under POTA for making specific utterances) and therefore is unlikely to be forgotten or overlooked.

But there is a larger issue here — one that goes beyond the issue of letters, arrests, chargesheets, allegations and counter-allegations. One facet of this is the extremely disturbing fact that the LTTE — the organisation which carried out Rajiv Gandhi's assassination and which continues to pose a subversive threat — continues to enjoy the support of some political parties within Tamil Nadu. The other — and arguably just as important aspect — is the legitimacy which organisations which blatantly support the LTTE have come to enjoy within the political mainstream. The fact that parties such as the MDMK and the PMK have been able to strike political alliances and be accommodated cosily into coalition Governments is a reflection on the narrow and self-serving concerns of almost every section of the political class. As for the Vajpayee Government, it has been less than serious — despite its attempt to project a tough face against certain kinds of terrorism — about containing the LTTE and its influence within India. If the recent happenings in Tamil Nadu set off a debate about how the LTTE and its sympathisers should be isolated and contained, then they would have served a very worthwhile purpose indeed.

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