March 23, 1998

Hounded by the charges of corruption pending against her, yet buoyed by the resurgence of her party in last month's elections to the Lok Sabha, AIADMK supremo J Jayalalitha bargains for a more decisive role in the new government at the Centre.

By Swapan Dasgupta and Vaasanthi

It could well prove to be the BJP's costliest lapse. If the party's political managers had only remembered to get the mandatory letters of endorsement from all the constituents of the BJP's pre-poll alliance on March 9 -- the day they met to put the finishing touches to the National Agenda for Governance -- it is likely that Atal Bihari Vajpayee would not have had to face the embarrassment of telling President K.R. Narayanan last Thursday that he had managed to secure the formal support of only 240 MPs in the Lok Sabha. In other words, despite winning 15 new supporters in the 12th Lok Sabha, Vajpayee was left with 12 less MPs than the BJP-led alliance's election tally of 252.

The deficit was entirely on account of the 27 MPs belonging to the AIADMK, the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), Tamizhaga Rajiv Congress (TRC) and the Janata Party who owed their primary allegiance to Puratchi Thalaivi (revolutionary leader) J. Jayalalitha. For a full 24 hours after Vajpayee received the President's letter asking him to demonstrate support, the imperious Jayalalitha kept the BJP leadership dangling. Through much of last Wednesday, the staff at her Poes Garden residence told callers from Delhi that "madam" was "unavailable". Even the Berkeley-educated Sukumar Nambiar, son of filmstar M.N. Nambiar and the BJP's link to Jayalalitha, failed to contact her. Finally at 6 p.m., party President L.K. Advani's residence in Delhi received a cryptic message from Chennai that "Madam has kept her cell phone on".

The Jayalalitha who answered Advani's call sang a different tune from the Jayalalitha who wowed the Capital's media on March 9 with her categorical announcement of "unconditional" support to a government led by Vajpayee and her spirited denunciation of Sonia Gandhi. Measuring her words with characteristic caution, she listed her demands to a stunned Advani:

• Appointment of Subramaniam Swamy, the mercurial Janata Party leader, as either finance or law minister;
  
• Bifurcation of the Finance Ministry and the appointment of Vazhapadi K. Ramamurthy of the TRC as minister for revenue and banking;
  
• Endorsement of the candidature of the AIADMK's M. Thambi Durai for the post of deputy Speaker.

To say that Advani was stunned would be an understatement. He was shell-shocked. Quickly recovering his composure, he told Jayalalitha that given the coalition's fragile majority in the Lok Sabha, he could not countenance denying the deputy speakership to the Congress. On her part, Jayalalitha did not press the point. Nor did she take amiss Advani's prevarication over the Finance Ministry's bifurcation, particularly when he assured the AIADMK chief of an important economic portfolio for Ramamurthy, a commitment reiterated by Vajpayee the next morning.

The crux of the problem was Jayalalitha's insistence on Swamy. When Advani told her that it would be difficult to accommodate the former Harvard professor in North Block, she deftly suggested the Law Ministry. Swamy, after all, held the law portfolio in the Chandra Shekhar government of 1990-91. It was Advani's turn to get tough. "You miss the point, Madam," he is understood to have replied, "It will not be possible to accommodate Swamy in the Cabinet at all. We are very clear on this point." The next day, Vajpayee repeated the message to Jayalalitha. "I cannot compromise on Swamy," he is said to have told her on the phone.

That clarity had been reached a few days ago. On March 5, a victorious Swamy arrived in Delhi from Madurai and called on both Vajpayee and Advani. It was their first social encounter with the man who parted acrimoniously from the Sangh Parivar in 1977. To the prime minister-designate, Swamy made the intention of his visit crystal clear: he wanted to be finance minister in the new government. Civility prevented Vajpayee from proffering an instant answer, but his mind was made up. As a man who perceived himself as the people's choice for prime ministership, he was not going to be dictated to by a man UF spokesman S. Jaipal Reddy once called "a threat to the judiciary" and George Fernandes denounced as the Congress' "Trojan horse". Last Thursday, the rest of the alliance partners endorsed Vajpayee's assessment -- with the Trinamool Congress' Ajit Panja offering a feeble protest. "I'd rather not form a government than give in to such pressure," thundered Vajpayee.

That the carefully crafted BJP alliance should falter at the final hurdle on this account has come as a surprise. Till two years ago, Swamy and Jayalalitha were pitted on the opposite sides of the political divide. Swamy described her as mentally unstable, charged her with colluding with the LTTE to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi and initiated corruption cases that have dogged her since she lost power in May 1996. On her part, Jayalalitha described him as a "pathological liar". Why the two patched up is a mystery, as is Jayalalitha's decision to make Swamy's appointment a prestige issue. If, as Jayalalitha is understood to have told a senior BJP leader, it is her endeavour to "defang" Swamy, why did she sour her relations with the BJP for his sake?

To some extent, Jayalalitha misread signals in Delhi. She believed that the BJP and Vajpayee were so desperate for power that they would give in to her demands. Jayalalitha never expected Advani to totally disregard her demand for dismissal of the DMK Government in Tamil Nadu. Says Advani: "It was possible for the Congress to take such an action a decade ago. Today, the courts can overturn similar willful decisions in just two days. To any demand of dismissal, my response is that it cannot be done. It turns public opinion against you." She was even more taken aback by Advani's circumspection about pinning responsibility for the Coimbatore blasts -- where he was the target. She interpreted it as evidence of the BJP's surreptitious cosying up to the DMK. Neither did she gauge the depth of Vajpayee's revulsion for Swamy, a man who made a series of undignified allegations -- including some of a personal nature -- against him during the days of the Morarji Desai government. Jayalalitha never expected Vajpayee to go public and announce his refusal to be cowed down by pressure.

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