The All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam left behind by J Jayalalitha, former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, could be compared to a honey bee colony in which the queen bee has just died. When a queen bee dies, a swarm of bees leave the hive to establish a new colony. When Jayalalitha, died on 5 December last, a cluster of members of the AIADMK, which included a section of its elected representatives in both the state legislature and Parliament, followed pretender VK Sasikala, a wasp dressed as a queen bee and posing as the real McCoy. Pending coronation, she kept the flock in comfort and well endowed within two luxury waterfront resorts near Chennai. Once the Supreme Court exposed Sasikala for what she really is, a usurper who conspired with Jayalalitha to amass wealth by most foul means, confusion prevailed and the MLAs kept captive in the seaside resorts ran helter-skelter in search of pastures new, but she kept them on a tight leash. O Panneerselvam, anointed regent queen bee by Jayalalitha and left to hold the hive together twice during her lifetime, failed to do so the third time when the reigning queen bee was no more. He lacked the charisma and skill of Jayalalitha. Even after officiating Governor Vidhyasagar Rao gave him ample opportunities, he could not rise to the occasion and paved the way for Sasikala to try and install her proxy as Chief Minister.
Notwithstanding its claim to having 1.5 crore card-carrying members, having completed three terms in office and being voted to power for a fourth term last year, the AIADMK has never been a political party with any ideology or programme other than making money on the sly. It began as the fan club of the late lamented MG Ramachandran, founder-leader of the party whose primary objective was to cut M Karunanidhi, DMK leader and then chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, to size. Capturing power was never on his initial agenda. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, through her CPI friends in Tamil Nadu, made him submit a memorandum listing corruption charges against Karunanidhi to the Governor which led to a vertical split in the DMK and the birth of the ADMK, renamed AIADMK.
The fledgling party, backed by the Janata Party, was voted to power in the post-Emergency 1977 election. The victory was short-lived. In the subsequent Lok Sabha election his party was routed, and Indira Gandhi, who became Prime Minister again in 1980, dismissed the MGR government together with seven other non-Congress ruled states.
In the following Tamil Nadu Assembly election in 1982, MGR paid cash for votes for the first time and set a bad precedent which has now spread to other states as well. The Election Commission has been grappling with this menace and has not been able to eradicate it as far as Tamil Nadu is concerned. The majority of those who vote for the AIADMK or the DMK have come to expect cash for vote as their democratic right. Jayalalitha, who snatched the AIADMK leadership from MGR following his death, added freebies to cash to influence voters and win elections. She too had a fan club following. In our first-past-the-post system of election with multiple contestants, an average of one-third of the electorate is enough to capture and hold on to power. Her target was the 30 to 35 per cent vulnerable section of society who look forward to largesse at every election time and it is easy to keep them loyal to the party.
Because of Jayalalitha’s capacity to gather votes even if by methods not in sync with the best traditions of democracy, her AIADMK has been the cynosure of political parties of all persuasions, from the Congress to the BJP, the Communists to the caste and community based outfits, all seeking an alliance. This had put her on a pedestal as an invincible politician feared by national leaders. When she managed to secure her acquittal in the disproportionate assets case, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the first national leader to congratulate her even as she claimed dharma had won over adharma. Now the nation knows who won. This is a classic case of denial of justice by delaying it. If only the Supreme Court had not waited more than eight months, Jayalalitha, like Sasikala, would have been in jail and Tamil Nadu’s contemporary history would have been not so sordid. The state would have escaped Black Saturday, 18 February 2017, when democracy was buried fathoms deep.
Edapadi Palanisami of the AIADMK, nominee of convict VK Sasikala, was voted as Chief Minister by a bunch of MLAs brought literally in chains from their detention camp, and physically lifting and throwing out Opposition leader MK Stalin and driving the other DMK members out by the partisan Speaker who was taking orders from prisoner number 9234 of Parappana Agrahara jail in Bangalore. While restoring the judgment of special court judge John Michael D’Cunha, the Supreme Court Bench of Justices PC Ghose and Amitava Roy, said: “We have analysed the evidence adduced by the parties and come to the conclusion that Jayalalitha, who was a public servant at the relevant time, had come into possession of assets disproportionate during the check period (1991-96) and had got the same disbursed in the names of Sasikala, Sudhakaran and Elavarasi and the firms and companies involved to hold this on her behalf with a masked front.” Their staying together in the Chief Minister’s private residence at Poes Garden was “not for any philanthropic purpose but to further the criminal conspiracy to hold assets.”
The institution of Governor has come under strain in this sordid drama. Mari Channa Reddy, Governor of Tamil Nadu who gave Subramanian Swamy leave to prosecute Jayalalitha in 1995 when she was at the zenith of power and popularity, was gheraoed in the Raj Bhavan for several days and during one of his official visits to Pondicherry, his entire convoy was waylaid on the Southern Grand Trunk Road. Swamy was put on her hit-list and several attempts were made on his life by AIADMK goons. Once in the Madras High Court complex, Jayalalitha’s women brigade lifted their sarees as Swamy was coming out of the court house, even as the City Police Commissioner chased him. It was to Jayalalitha’s samadhi the new Chief Minister led his captive MLAs after the impugned trust vote on Saturday and pledged to restore ‘Jayalalitha rule’.
The people of Tamil Nadu certainly deserve something better. Since her death, present Governor Vidhyasagar Rao was faced with a tricky situation. He administered the oath of office as Chief Minister to O Panneerselvam, her chosen successor, but Sasikala, her partner in crime, had different ideas. She first captured control of the AIADMK and then the party MLAs and kept them hidden in a beach resort and staked her claim to chief ministership. Since Panneerselvam could not mobilise the requisite number of MLAs, the Governor had no option but to invite Sasikala’s nominee for a floor-test.
Article 163 of the Constitution gives the Governor sufficient discretionary powers to stipulate terms and conditions for the conduct of the floor test. Had he made it a condition to let the MLAs visit their constituencies at least once before the test vote, they would have conducted themselves differently. During the entire rule of Jayalalitha, Sasikala remained an extra-constitutional authority and no one’s property was safe under her covetous eyes. And her writ was faithfully carried out by an obliging civil service and police. With the death of the queen bee, the AIADMK as constituted now is poised to disintegrate and disappear. The sooner, the better.
The writer is a veteran journalist and former Director of The Statesman Print Journalism School.