In a significant indication the Congress party was keeping options open in Tamil Nadu, party president Sonia Gandhi called up AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa and invited her for “discussions over tea” in the national capital. Jayalalithaa, scheduled to take oath as the new CM tomorrow after routing the DMK-Congress alliance, has accepted the invitation.
Even as the Congress described Gandhi’s call to the new Tamil Nadu chief minister as a “courtesy call”, it bears significance in the backdrop of the ongoing 2G spectrum probe, where DMK chief M Karunanidhi’s daughter and Rajya Sabha MP, K Kanimozhi, faces the possibility of an arrest.
After sweeping the assembly polls, Jayalalithaa has already indicated she may not accommodate the pre-poll allies like DMDK and Left parties in her government. While the alliance bagged 203 of the 234 seats, her AIADMK alone got 150 MLAs in the Tamil Nadu assembly.
The relations between the Congress and the Dravidian party had been strained since 2004 when Jayalalithaa had declared that she would not support the UPA because she did not want to see ‘foreigner’ Sonia Gandhi as the PM. But when the 2G trouble started creating tensions between the DMK and the Congress towards the end of last year, she gave an interview declaring her support in case the Congress dumped the DMK.
