In the course of her rarest or the rare Press conference she conducted at the secretariat on January 31, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha made some outrageous claims about herself saying that she is “a responsible constitutional authority” and that “wild reckless charges” were made against her and allegations against her were “most ridiculous pieces of fiction and absurd charges”. It requires no great political knowledge for anyone familiar with her political career to ask whether she was speaking in self-criticism because all these are the exclusive traits of her.
To start from the present times, first of all if she had had even a modicum of responsibility as an elected constitutional authority, would she have spurned a huge, modern and aesthetically constructed structure to conveniently accommodate the Assembly and Secretariat, over land belonging to the State government at a cost of over Rs.550 crore from the tax money of the people and preferred to shift back to the cramped dungeon-like Fort St George complex, not owned by the State government, the site which she herself described as “unfit for human habitation” during her previous regime. If at all she had had sense of responsibility in her capacity as the trustee of public money and property, would she have ordered conversion of the buildings constructed exclusively designed for Assembly and Secretariat and the Anna Centenary library into hospitals. Except the circumference wall the rest of the structures have to be totally demolished and rebuilt to convert them into full fledged hospitals, which in the end would cost the exchequer almost the same amount of money involved in original construction. Is this a responsible act of a constitutional authority?
If she has any sense of responsibility, will she allow many buildings like the extension of Madras Medical College at the site of Central jail, the multi-storied Chennai CoP office in Vepery, extended buildings of Chengulput Medical College Hospital etc., constructed with public funds during the previous DMK rule to get rusted, corrode and crumble away by not opening and using them? If she has any sense of responsibility, will she discontinue schemes/projects conceived and implemented during the previous rule throwing to winds the norm of continuity of governance and administration in a democratic system? All these atrocious actions borne out of personal prejudice!
If she were a responsible constitutional authority, will she abandon a education system for schools formulated with wide consultation with academics and scholars and started implementing placing the studies of over one crore school children of the state and wasting public money in unnecessary litigation up to the apex court, wantonly slowing down execution of on-going electricity projects started by the previous government and plunge the state into darkness for 18 hours a day and blaming the Centre and DMK government for her failure, adamantly refusing to consult other political parties in the state and take them into confidence, unilaterally making legal moves which protract and do not serve the immediate need of water in Cauvery for our farmers without taking any political initiative to talk to neighboring states and betraying them. Are not the prospects of agriculture and industry bleak in the state due to her irresponsibility?
If she has had sense of responsibility for the state, will she boycott two meetings of chief ministers of southern states convened by the Union Home and Finance Ministers in Bangalore and enacted the farce of walkout from the NDC meeting in New Delhi?
The handing over possession of prime lands in the heart of Chennai city taken over from a vested interest by the previous government and ratified by higher courts, back to the same vested interest; misusing power once again, even after the Supreme Court pulled up her when she attempted the same during her previous regime, and forcing the DVAC to reinvestigate the Disproportionate Assets case against her so as to dilute it and escape conviction; foisting false cases and defamation case against her political opponents, invoking Goondas Act if they were released on bails and shamelessly withdrawing the cases if some of them join the ruling party; keeping her ministers and government and police officials perennially in tenterhooks by resorting to whimsical changes and reshuffles resulting in unstable administration under a brutally stable regime- are they all the actions of a responsible constitutional authority?
If she were ever a responsible constitutional authority or a responsible leader of a political party, she would not have slighted other constitutional authorities over and above her office. How she treated the highest constitutional authority of the nation, the President of India recently at the diamond jubilee function of the State Assembly, how she had usurped the privileges of the Governor now and turned his address to the Assembly into a mere rain of praises for her, how she abused the then Governor Channa Reddy of perverted behavior with her, accused former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of going to sleep early in the night and P.V.Narasimha Rao of having generation gap, former Deputy Prime Minister L.K.Advani of suffering from selective amnesia, High Court judges of making unfound observations about her regime, what were the treatment meted out to former Governor Channa Reddy on his way to Puducherry and a high Court judge who delivered an unfavourable judgment against her regime and much more are records of her history.
Above all, can Jayalalitha or her cohorts cite one instance of her referring to Kalaignar whenever he was the Chief Minister of the State, with respect the constitutional authority of the office of the Chief Minister commanded. Jayalalitha must be the last person in the whole of India to speak about responsibility and constitutional authority.
Next about her statement on “wild reckless charges” and “most ridiculous pieces of fiction and absurd charges”, no person on the earth can excel her in making such charges against one and all. In fact, she started her political journey itself by resorting to such charges not against any opponent but against the very person who introduced her in politics and whom she calls as her ‘mentor’, MGR. Will any fan or follower of MGR even remotely imagine that he was envious of her popularity? But she dared to accuse him of envying her and suppressing in a letter she wrote in her own handwriting to the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi even when MGR was alive. Accusing him of incapacity to head the state she wanted Rajiv Gandhi to make her the chief minister. But after his demise she accused his wife Janaki Ramachandran of giving him poisoned buttermilk and killing him.
After accusing Kalaignar, the then Chief Minister in 1989-91, of not extending enough assistance to LTTE leader Prabhakaran, she had no scruples of changing the tune and accuse him of passing on official secrets to the LTTE and get the DMK government dismissed by the combine of Chandrasekhar-Subramanian Swamy-R.Venkataraman. She accused late G.K.Moopanar of having a role in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. In fact she won the Assembly election in 1991 only by the false propaganda against the DMK’s role in the assassination. Later the Jain Commission of enquiry into the conspiracy angle in the assassination refused to register her deposition rejecting her contentions as lies without any evidence.
Now her charge that the DMK was preventing the Centre from extending any assistance to her government and supplying electricity from the northern grid to tide over the power crisis in the state is the latest typical example for her “most ridiculous pieces of fiction and absurd charges”. Right through her public life none of the charges leveled by her against her opponents had held water and ended in fiasco. Indeed her political career itself will end in fiasco! r
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