Spending over Rs.100 crores, Jayalalitha lavished pages of full page colour advertisements to all national dailies on the day of completion of one year of her regime in Tamil Nadu that the north Indian joked that she was lying on the doorsteps of their houses early in the morning. All such studious efforts of her to build a national image for herself in pursuit of her Prime Ministerial aspiration got shattered following her misadventure of banning Kamal Hassan’s film ‘Viswaroopam’ in the state to settle personal scores with him by instigating some Muslim outfits.
This damage suffered by her forced her to conduct a rarest of rare Press Meet at the Secretariat on January 31 to defend her indefensible action. To be accurate, that was the third meet she conducted after the first, immediately after she assumed office, when she promised to conduct weekly press meets and the second when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a few minutes stopover at the secretariat during her visit to Chennai. As is with all her promises, she did not keep her assurance to meet the media every week. Instead the media persons had to run after vehicle carrying their mikes and other accessories to seek her reactions to developments. She would be ‘graceful’ at times, whenever the developments around were not problematic for her, to lower the wind screen of her air-conditioned car and oblige by answering one or two questions which were more than enough for the servile sections of the media to make headline stories the next hour and day.
The very fact that she addressed the Press meet on January 31 entirely in English demonstrated her anxiety over the very harsh condemnations her decision on Kamal’s movie received in the national media and international media social media. But her attempt ended as damp squib.
At the press conference, she took pains to refute reports that the ban on the movies was linked to ‘business interest’ and the allegation of DMK President Kalaignar that she had complained, in a letter in her own handwriting, to MGR about actor Kamal Hassan. She described the charge concerning the ‘business interest’ as ‘wild and reckless’ and the other as “one of the most ridiculous pieces of fiction and one of the absurd charges I have ever faced in my life.”
On Kalaignar’s allegation, she wondered why she should write to MGR “on such a trivial matter” when she was meeting him on a daily basis. She said she would file defamation cases against Kalaignar and the media for publishing ‘derogatory charges’ against her on the issue.
But her ‘bravery’ nose-dived after Kalaignar immediately issued a statement claiming to have proof to defend that Jayalalitha indeed had written letter to MGR complaining against Kamal and that he was ready to produce the proof in court.
Rebutting the charge regarding the business interest in Jaya TV whatever she said was undoubtedly double-boiled and double-filtered lies, which were well known to the audience press persons, who must have been heartily laughing inside. She daringly said other than the fact that it supported the ADMK, the channel did not belong to her or to the party. She did not own any shares. She was not in anyway associated with the day-to-day administration of the channel. “I have nothing to do with Jaya TV”. “To say that there was a demand that the film should be sold for a low price and because of that I am taking the action is a wild reckless charge against a responsible constitutional authority.”
Even as Jayalalitha was addressing the press meet at the secretariat and making all these averments vis-à-vis Jaya TV channel, the only mike placed on the table in front of her was that of the Jaya TV channel and no other TV channels were permitted to have their mikes also placed. Why did the government allow such exclusive privilege to that channel if the Chief had no interest in it?
Secondly, in the last 20 months since she assumed power, Jayalalitha had made very important government announcements including the hike in bus fares, milk prices and power tariff, through Jaya TV as if it was state-owned channel like the Doordarshan. How did she do it and why her regime gave that exclusive right to that channel if she “was not associated with it in anyway”?
If she is not holding any shares in the channel, who owns it? The channel is owned by Mavis Satcom Private Limited and according to an affidavit filed in the Madras High Court, the Managing Director of the company now is Prabha Sivakumar. Who is she? She owning the shares of the company is the daughter of Sasikala’s elder brother Sundaravadanam. Another daughter of this man Anuradha, who is also the wife of TTV Dinakaran, was totally in-charge of the administration of the channel till December 2011, when the drama of exiting Sasikala from the Poes Garden residence of Jayalalitha, was enacted. It is to be noted that although Anuradha left the administration the shares in the name of Prabha Sivakumar were not transferred to any other name so far. The whole world knows the relation between Sasikala and Jayalalitha. And how can she vouch that the TV channel in the ownership of Sasikala’s elder brother’s daughter and herself had no connection? Is it not laughable for her? Will she say next that she and Sasikala have no connection? Why should a private channel, without any profit motive and incurring a huge loss, round the clock read out line by line, word by word Jayalalitha’s drabbest statements, even condolence messages on the demise of some unknown ADMK cadre, and the removals and nominations of functionaries of her party and its wings that she effects regularly?
Above all, what were the means of Anuradha or Prabha Sivakumar or Sasikala’s elder brother Sundaravadanam to start a TV channel? The offices of the erstwhile JJ TV channel and Jaya TV channel, till recently, were functioning only in the extension block of Jayalalitha’s Poes Garden residence and the building where Jaya TV channel now functions in Ekkaduthangal also belonged to her. Penalty of totally Rs.28 crores for violation of Foreign Exchange regulations for purchase of telecasting equipment and payment of transponder charges for now defunct JJ TV channel were imposed on V Bhaskaran and Sasikala. Will she disown them all if she has no connection with the channels in question?
Another solid proof for her blatant lie is that the Managing Director of Jaya TV owning company Prabha Sivakumar is living in Jayalalitha’s official residence of Veda Illam, 36,Poes Garden Chennai. If Jayalalitha’s contention that she had no connection with Jaya TV is true, has she let her residence for rent to its managing director? Is she so poor?
Making “wild reckless charges against constitutional authorities” and resorting to “trivial” retributions against her opponents and hated persons are the personal traits of Jayalalitha which require another chapter each.
Jayalalitha also had denied that she had personal grudge against Kamal Haasan for having made a speech at a function that a dhoti-clad Tamil should become the Prime Minister, indirectly indicating his wish that a sari-clad Tamil should not. She only asked “Why should I take offence at such a statement because he is not the one to decide who should be the Prime Minister”. This statement itself betrays her ambition to become Prime Minister somehow, revealing her political naivete. When a question about the chances of Kalaignar becoming the Prime Minister was asked in an interview to a magazine, the seasoned statesman curtly replied that he knew his heights, outrightly rejecting any such ambition for him. That is the difference between a statesman and a megalomaniac.
Kalaignar has already nailed her claim “I have not done anything to stall the movies produced by Karunanidhi’s family.”
As a whole, her labored defense of her indefensible action has only exposed her more and more of rebukes.
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