DMK braces to defend its daughter

The CBI’s supplementary charge sheet in the 2G case including Kanimozhi and Kalaignar TV Managing Director Sharad Kumar Reddy, even after submitting documentary evidence and proof for the Rs.200 crore transaction, has “deeply bewildered us”, the DMK said here on Wednesday after its high-level policy committee meeting.

The DMK took a serious view of the “exaggerated claims” of losses to the state Exchequer from the 2G spectrum allocation, based on the “presumed loss” given in the CAG report last year. It also resented the systematic campaign by vested interests against the DMK, particularly its top leadership led by Karunanidhi to “berate the party and dislodge him from power”. But the meeting chaired by Karunanidhi, and attended by senior leaders and MPs’ including Prof K Anbazhagan, M K Stalin, M K Alagiri, Dayanidhi Maran, Kanimozhi and Veerapandi S Arumugam, took a resolute view that the “DMK is confident of vindicating its position and establishing the truth in the 2G case.”

Consensus
The consensus at the meeting was that despite “an elitist power group” using the CAG report to the hilt “on their political chessboard”, and some political sections using this issue “to create a rift within the (Congress-led) UPA and even break it,” the DMK “will not fall a prey to this “prachara mayaii (misleading campaign)”. Instead, the DMK resolved to take rational, measured steps to legally meet the present case as well.

Addressing a press conference later, Karunanidhi did not wish to be drawn into how strongly the party felt about the attitude of the Congress-led Central Government on the issue, more so with CBI intensifying its investigations with more charge sheets and serious charges. “We have touched upon this (Centre’s approach) in our resolution,” Karunanidhi quipped. It implied that the DMK had not lost its cool with an important ally like the Congress, ahead of the counting of votes in the Assembly elections.

When pressed whether it was pushing the DMK towards an ‘acute (moral) predicament’, the 97-year-old DMK patriarch drew upon the “predicament” of Yudhishthira, the eldest of the Pandava brothers in ‘Mahabaratha’. “I think that predicament will not come to us,” he said, without elaborating. Kanimozhi, he indicated to another query, would appear before the CBI Special Court in Delhi on May 6.

Coming to his daughter’s defence, Karunanidhi lauded Kanimozhi’s leadership efforts in organising the festival of Tamil folk-arts, ‘Chennai Sangamam’ in the last five years and the job-fairs she had organised in various districts that provided placements for nearly 1.33 lakh youths.

As some sections could not see her grow in stature through her social and political work, “Kanimozhi is now being targeted,” he said. She did not want to attend Wednesday’s meeting, due to the media glare on her. But Karunanidhi said he had gone all the way to pick her up from her residence as he wanted Kanimozhi to be present. In the same breath, the DMK chief took a dig at the media for not asking AIADMK leader J Jayalalitha, why she had not yet appeared before the Special Court in Bangalore in the wealth case against her.

Other party sources told Deccan Herald that the DMK meeting did discuss the Congress party’s “carelessness” towards a key ally in the UPA. But the meeting veered round to the view that though the fallout of the case was serious, it was not a political issue to justify Congress-bashing.  The DMK, after consulting its lawyers, may go for “quashing” the CBI’s supplementary charge sheet when Kanimozhi appears before the special court, sources said.