2G turned the tide towards Jaya
Right from the start of the 2011, as revelations in the 2G’ spectrum scam made the ruling DMK’s position in the State politically untenable and coalition politics rather stressful for the UPA Government in New Delhi, the writing on the wall was clear for M Karunanidhi and his loyal rank and file.
The first turning point to smash the political gridlock was the CBI’s sensational arrest of the former Telecommunications Minister A Raja of the DMK on Feb 2. It was termed a “significant milestone” in the criminal investigations into the spectrum allocation scam, which otherwise had made little headway until the Supreme Court began to directly monitor the case.
The Assembly election in Tamil Nadu was then barely a couple of months away. Yet, there were enough tell-tale signs of “new beginnings” in the offing for the opposition AIADMK.
For, if there was one leader from the South who had rallied loud protests against the ‘2G’ scam since the run-up to May 2009 Lok Sabha polls, it was the AIADMK supremo J Jayalalitha.
Subsequent events unfolding so rapidly, more so with the Election Commission in early March announcing a one-day April 13 poll for Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, alongside other States including West Bengal, only seemed to enlarge the political ‘tabula rasa (clean slate)’ syndrome.
The downturn for the DMK led by 88-year-old Muthuvel Karunanidhi seemed inescapable, with the ‘2G’ investigations throwing up one shock after another that directly or indirectly impinged on his party’s poll fortunes. But Karunanidhi’s political fortitude would not make him budge an inch.
Jayalalitha on the other hand was going through a tortuous course of forging a formidable alliance with the Left parties and the DMDK founded by actor-politician Vijayakant for the Assembly polls, while the Congress was stuck with the DMK fending off one embarrassment after another.
The height of it was CBI landing at ‘Anna Arivalayam’ itself, the headquarters of the DMK, to quiz Dayalu Ammal, Karunanidhi’s elder wife and his daughter and M P Kanimozhi, vis-à-vis the ‘Kalaignar TV’ payment track in the ‘2G’ case, even as DMK and Congress leaders were holding seat-sharing talks for the Assembly polls.
The death of Sadiq Batcha, a close aide of A Raja, at his Chennai house on March 16 was no mere side-show to the political drama that ensued after the 2G scam revelations. And when Jayalalitha began a whirlwind election campaign before a massive crowd at Srirangam, from where she contested and won, the people’s resolve to defeat the DMK was no longer a secret.
Later, when Kanimozhi was named in the CBI’s second charge-sheet on April 24, less than a fortnight after the polling, the AIADMK was still not counting its chickens before they are hatched. Jayalalitha even urged the Election Commission, vigorously fighting money power in the polls, to even video-graph the counting on May 13 to avert any possible massive rigging.
But eventually, it was a resounding and sweet victory for Jayalalitha, with a massive sweep for the AIADMK-led alliance taking 203 of the 234 seats.
The DMK lost even its opposition status as it got only 23 seats, six less than the DMDK’s 29, though its top leaders -Karunanidhi and his son MK Stalin- returned to the Assembly.
The kernels of the ‘new beginning’ seen in the early part of the year found fruition On May 16, 2011, when Jayalalitha assumed office as chief minister for a third time. Straight on her first day in Office at Fort St George, the old Secretariat complex, she signed seven orders to fulfil her poll promises including giving 20 kg of free rice to all ration card holders.
The gusto and enthusiasm with which she began her new innings was so full of promise and hope, even as, by a strange twist of fate, her arch-rival Karunanidhi came under emotive stress as his daughter Kanimozhi was lodged in Tihar Jail on May 20, a week after DMK’s political rout here.
An edgy logic was at play as fortunes fluctuated in the second half of the year. Jayalalitha’s bold initiative to take action against alleged land-grabbers under the previous DMK regime and her decision to convert the new Assembly complex into a Hospital struck a chord with the masses.
But some of Jayalalitha’s other decisions like deferring the ‘Samacheer Kalvi Thittam’ (Uniform School Education System), were unpopular though the AIADMK politically consolidated further in the October Local Bodies elections.
Riding that high wave, Jayalalitha pulled off a stunner towards the year-end, when she expelled her long-time friend and confidante Sasikala, and her family members from the party on Dec 19 in a blot-from-the-blue move to put the State’s governance back on rails.
Engulfed by two raging controversies in recent weeks- a people’s struggle to scrap the Kudankulam Nuclear Power project in Tirunelveli district and emotions running high on the Mullaperiyar dam issue-, Jayalalitha now seems drifting, uncharacteristic of her as an able administrator.
