Jayalalithaa makes BJP eat humble pie

AIADMK agreed to give seven Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of which the BJP has little chance of winning in three seats.

Significantly, AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa made the BJP bend and refused to relent on the issue of giving BJP member of Parliament from Pudukkottai, Thirun-avukkarasu, a seat as part of the seat-sharing arrangement between the two parties.

In retaliation, the Janata Dal (United), announced it would set up its own candidates in Tamil Nadu because the BJP-AIADMK alliance was not an National Democratic Alliance (NDA) pact as NDA convener George Fernandes was not consulted by the BJP before it changed partners in Tamil Nadu.

Thirunavukkarasu had sided with Jayalalithaa after MGR's death but began boasting about his closeness to the AIADMK chief as a result of which she began cutting him to size. He was thrown out of the party and he floated his own party. This later merged with the BJP, increasing the tally of the BJP to four seats in the Lok Sabha.

Pleading by the BJP on Pudukkottai had no effect, and now the AIADMK and the DMK are likely to face each other in a direct fight in the constituency.

The BJP is considering the option of getting Thirunavukkarasu into the Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan, because he merged his party on the condition that he would get the party nomination from this seats.

This incident clearly indicates that Jayalalithaa's insistence on getting her own way, which led to the parting of ways between the BJP and the AIADMK in the past, is going to continue and could lead to problems in the NDA in the future again.

Significantly, DMK chief M Karunanidhi has backed Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani's claim that he should be allowed to use the Prime Minister's aircraft. So clearly the DMK is keeping its powder dry with the NDA-BJP as well.

The three seats previously held by the BJP""Coimbatore, Nilgiris and Nagarcoil""will be recontested by the party. In addition the party has been given Pondicherry, Dharmapuri, Chidambaram (SC) and North Madras.

The problem is that the AIADMK refused to entertain the BJP's request that it be given South Madras instead of North Madras. Within South Madras fall Tamil Brahmin-dominated constituencies like Mylapore, viewed by the BJP as its natural constituency.

It has little chance of winning North Madras that is currently held by C Kuppusamy, a senior DMK trade union leader. The constituency has a strong trade union organisation and Kuppusamy's rival in 1999 was Sounderajan of the CPI(M).

In both Dharmapuri and Chidambaram, the BJP will face its erstwhile ally, the PMK. The party won both seats with huge margins in the last election.

In Delhi, Union Food Minister and JD (U) chief Sharad Yadav declared that his party would contest as many as 20 seats in Tamil Nadu in alliance with the Pudhiya Tamizhagam, the Dalit Panthers of India and the Makkal Tamil Desam.

Although these are small regional parties, Yadav's move indicates that everyone in the NDA is not as sanguine about the alliance with the AIADMK as the BJP leadership.

Yadav made it clear that the JD(U) and three small parties would contest independent of the BJP's alliance with the AIADMK. "There is no NDA alliance in Tamil Nadu," he said, adding since the BJP had forged its own alliance plan in the state, the JD(U) was planning its own political strategy.

The BJP's alliance with the AIADMK did not find favour with the NDA convener and Yadav said Fernandes would also be campaigning for the candidates supported by the JD(U).

Fernandes was upset over the BJP move to dump the DMK and opt for an alliance with Jayalalithaa without taking the NDA into confidence.