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TN Congress leaders rush to Delhi

N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras

Upset by the alliance between the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Pattali Makkal Katchi, Congress politicians from Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry have rushed to New Delhi to appraise the high command of the situation and get instructions on how to tackle the emerging scenario.

The party leadership is said to be looking to the Tamil Maanila Congress for direction, given its own compulsions with the budget session of Parliament due in less than a fortnight.

While there is a division in both units of the Congress over the issue of aligning with the PMK, the Pondicherry Pradesh Congress Committee is distinctly disturbed, given the PMK's eagerness to grab the chief minister's post in the Union territory after the polls.

Both Chief Minister P Shanmugam and PPCC president V Narayanaswamy left for New Delhi on Wednesday to express their anxieties to the high command.

"Obviously, AIADMK supremo Jayalalitha seems to have given an unwritten commitment to PMK founder S Ramadoss on her support for his son S Anbumani becoming Pondicherry chief minister after the polls," a PPCC leader said.

"We do not know what other commitments have transpired between the two, given that Jayalalitha is opening up a line of communication with the BJP leadership through journalist Cho Ramaswamy, and possibly others. We do not know what games she could be up to in the post-poll scenario, particularly if she became chief minister, and would need the BJP's blessings for her continuance without trouble. After all, she too has 10 Lok Sabha members now along with the PMK's five to offer the National Democratic Alliance against the DMK's 11."

The Congress leadership is believed to be peeved with the AIADMK for not taking it into confidence on the matter. "We alone seem to have been taken by surprise. Even the DMK and BJP seem to have read the evolving situation better," said a Congress politician contacted in New Delhi.

"But then we had alerted the high command about such a possibility," the Pondicherry leader quoted earlier said.

"There is also the question of the PMK's support for pan-Tamil militant groups, including the LTTE, involved in Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, and the TNLA and TNRF, which are associated with the brigand Veerappan," he added.

The Pondy politician pointed out that Ramadoss had sought to raise the Vanniar bogey in his defence of Veerappan at one stage, and "it will be difficult even for Jayalalitha to attack the ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu now on the Veerappan-TNLA issue with the PMK for an ally".

It could become even more embarrassing for the AIADMK and the Congress, should Veerappan be nabbed between now and the elections.

For his part, a Tamil Nadu Congress politician recalled the AIADMK's contribution in breaking an emerging Congress-PMK alliance in the 1993 by-elections using the same LTTE bogey. Jayalalitha, then chief minister, reportedly used the good offices of then Union minister of state K V Thangkabalu to reach to Sonia Gandhi a videocassette of a pro-LTTE procession organised by the PMK just months after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination.

"The PMK processionists were shouting slogans praising the assassins of Rajiv Gandhi, who in turn was condemned through slogans. Now the very same AIADMK wants us to join hands with the PMK," he noted caustically.

AIADMK politicians, however, refer to the changed situation. Said a parliamentarian of the party: "There are no permanent friends or enemies in politics, as Ramadoss himself has said. In this particular case, what objection can the Congress have to admitting the pro-LTTE PMK after party president Sonia Gandhi herself sought a presidential pardon for Nalini, an accused in the case who has been sentenced to death?"

It is this issue that is also exercising the TMC. Apart from the fewer seats that the party can now hope for in the AIADMK's company, TMC founder G K Moopanar is known to be close to the Nehru-Gandhi clan. Besides he was a witness to the assassination that has moved him no end.

"But the TMC should have no problems with the PMK if the Congress parent, and Sonia Gandhi herself, do not have any objections," the AIADMK parliamentarian added.

Moopanar, however, is undecided as of now. "We will take an appropriate decision at the appropriate time," he said.

TMC general secretary Peter Alphonse said Moopanar would take a decision that would have the greater interests of the state, rather than the party alone, into consideration.

Though the TMC leadership was aware of the likelihood of the PMK joining the AIADMK-led alliance, the party is upset with Jayalalitha for not taking Moopanar into confidence. "Now we do not know what other cards she has up her sleeve," a TMC politician remarked.

But another section in the party feels that the "AIADMK was as much justified in talking to the PMK as we were in talking to the DMK. What could Jayalalitha do if the talks with the PMK concluded faster than expected while we drag on with our decision-making for our own reasons?"

But even these sections feel the TMC should take its decision after weighing the pros and cons carefully. Indications are that the TMC is awaiting a signal from New Delhi. "We are awaiting the reaction of the Congress high command, the CPI and the CPI-M. After all, the two Communist parties are known critics of pan-Tamil militancy in the state and the LTTE's role in Sri Lanka. They have also been opposed to the casteist politics of parties like the PMK in Tamil Nadu and the communal approach of those like the Muslim League in neighbouring Kerala," the TMC politician said.

The AIADMK, however, is unfazed. The party's MP remarked: "In this observation itself lies the answer for the TMC. If the Communists could call the Muslim League communal in Kerala and join with it in Tamil Nadu and the rest of the country on a secular platform against the BJP, then they should have no great objection to the PMK joining the 'secular front' in the larger national interest. Nor should the Congress have any great objection, given our combined fight against the common BJP enemy with its communal agenda."

Interestingly, a section of the Communist parties in the state seems to sharing this perception. "There should be no problem for the Congress and the TMC continuing in the combine," a state secretariat member of the Communist Party of India, Marxist, said when contacted. "But in reality, their abstention from the AIADMK front will ensure more seats for both Communist parties," he pointed out.

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