Jayalalithaa Goes Fishing..

J. Jayalalithaa, TN Chief Minister, was in New Delhi today for a meeting with the Prime Minister. A charter of demands for TN may be the apparent reason for the meeting. However, our media, alert as ever, had all kinds of headlines including this one from Times Now – “Jaya Storms Delhi’. You would have thought JJ had launched an attack similar to the midnight one at Ramlila Maidan. And all the channels and sites reported “DMK watches closely”. I don’t think that is completely true. DMK may not have bothered much considering Sonia Gandhi is in Switzerland along with Rahul Baby, according to Subramanian Swamy.

Post her meeting she addressed the media and there was this routine demand for Dayanidhi Maran’s exit and other mundane utterances. There is one statement she made that stands out though (From NDTV website):

Home Minister P Chidambaram "has not won the parliamentary election. In fact he lost the election...he has played a fraud on the nation." According to official records, Chidambaram defeated his AIADMK opponent by 3,354 votes. The Chief Minister said that in the general elections in May 2009, the data entry operator in the Sivaganga Lok Sabha constituency in Tamil Nadu transferred votes won by her candidate Raja Kannappan to Mr Chidambaram.

PC has reacted by stating that it is “contempt of court”! So what are you gonna do, PC? JJ had dared to say out loud what many in the opposition and media had long avoided touching upon. As far back as I can remember, PC was trailing in that 2009 LS election and was declared defeated, even in the media, but some hours later was declared the winner. A lot has since been written about the EVM being tampered or not being fool-proof. That is a topic for the election commission and the Madras High Court, where a case is pending on that election outcome.

Politics is not the normal business of this blog but in this case I will make an exception. Jayalalithaa has won the recent TN elections against the DMK on issues of corruption. The UPA and the Congress are parties to the extraordinary saga of corruption all around. If JJ is hobnobbing with the Congress it will be another foolish mistake from this lady who has always been an opportunist and a terrible alliance partner. If she has learnt her lessons from past mistakes and respects the verdict of her electorate she will stay clear of the Congress. On the other hand she may also be well aware that she is getting on in years and the only thing of interest to her may be staying in power one way or another. Well, that is true for any politician, isn’t it?

Let’s get back on track with her comments on P.Chidambaram though. The news channels that covered her press conference mentioned various topics touched upon in the post-presser analysis but none of them touched upon the statement she made about PC’s election being fraudulent. A few Hindi channels started mentioning it as did some websites so now all of them are back to talking about this.

Unlike a Laloo or a Digvijay Singh who frequently shoot their mouths off or utter some nonsense regularly (Less by Laloo lately for obvious reasons), PC is a skilful and smooth talker. Regardless, there is a lot that PC has to answer for and some of these questions were raised in previous posts I had made.

Ravi Shankar Kapoor not so long authored a book 'How India'sIntellectuals Spread Lies'. Prominently featured among the lie-mongers were Jawaharlal Nehru, Suzanne Arundhati Roy, Mani Shankar Aiyar and of course P. Chidambaram…I wrote that in my post “Saffron Terror: Chidambaram's Cheap Trick” In case you haven’t read the book by Kapoor, I recommend reading it. (You can read a chapter at his blog.)

I also recommend browsing through these previous posts on this blog:

Radia Tapes, Phone Tapping - Chidambaram Must Come Clean

Radia Tapes Leak: Needle Of Suspicion Closer To Chidambaram?

I believe there is a lot that PC has to answer for. To start with, after all the drama about Nira Radia and phone tapping there is yet to be a case filed against her. For two years her phones were being tapped for many reasons and it is hard to believe that the government couldn’t come up with a case against her. Well, we will wait and watch.

There is something very intriguing. Many have wondered and even alleged that PC may be the brain behind the Ramlila atrocity on the night of June 4. There was all-round condemnation of that action by non-UPA political parties, even by the detractors of Ramdev and those who were opposed to the ‘civil society’ movement. There was something missing.

I may not be the best informed person but I have not found any news report on any channel, newspaper or website reporting Jayalalithaa having condemned the Ramlila attack. I would like to be corrected, but it makes me wonder what she’s fishing for!