J Jayalalithaa death probe commission gets 7th extension, no headway

The Justice A Arumughaswamy Commission probing the “mysterious death” of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa got the seventh extension on Monday, the 72nd birth anniversary of the AIADMK leader, in its two-and-a-half years of existence.

Though the Commission has been restrained from conducting its proceedings since April 2019 by the Supreme Court, the committee continues to function on public money. The AIADMK government, which instituted the inquiry in September 2017, hasn’t taken any concrete steps to get the stay vacated from the Supreme Court thereby delaying the proceedings and final outcome.

A total of 147 people, including Ministers, secretaries to governments, senior officials and doctors who treated Jayalalithaa, testified before the Commission till April. V K Sasikala, Jayalalithaa’s long-time aide currently serving life term in disproportionate assets (DA) case in a Bengaluru jail, submitted a voluminous response as she could not appear in person.

Top officials like the then Chief Secretary P Rama Mohana Rao, Sheela Balakrishnan and the then Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan are some of the prominent people who testified before the Commission.

From the beginning, the Commission is more of a political tool than finding the “mystery” in Jayalalithaa’s death. The Commission was instituted as part of a compromise arrived at between the O Panneerselvam faction and the camp led by Edappadi K Palaniswami for a merger in August 2017.

As part of the deal, Panneerselvam merged his faction and joined Palaniswami as his deputy in the cabinet. Though the Commission functioned for a full 19 months, Panneerselvam never appeared before it and testified despite being summoned over three times.

It was Panneerselvam, at the height of his rebellion against Sasikala, who first raised doubts over Jayalalithaa’s death. His faction leaders had even alleged that Jayalalithaa was pushed down in her Poes Garden residence before she was hospitalised.

The Commission, whose mandate when constituted in 2017 was to submit its report in three months, has got its seventh extension on Monday for another four months. DMK, the principal Opposition party, says the government is extending the tenure of the commission as it is not able to conclude anything on the issue.

“The commission was just an eye wash. It was constituted only to facilitate the merger of OPS and EPS faction. They did it for political purposes and don’t know how to come out of it. That is the reason why they keep extending its tenure,” DMK spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP T K S Elangovan told DH.

While AIADMK leaders said it was for the government to decide on the appeal in Supreme Court, efforts to reach the Commission officials proved futile.

Prof Ramu Manivannan, Head of the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Madras, told DH that there would no be outcome from the inquiry. “It has been almost three years and it is an absolute mockery of misuse of public money and democracy. Nothing will come out of this inquiry. This is a publicity stunt and nothing more,” he said.