In jail finally A.J. Philip Retribution has at last caught up with Jayalalithaa The majesty of the law was demonstrated yet again when Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa was convicted of corruption, sentenced to four years’ imprisonment and a fine of $16 million. She was at the zenith of her popularity with her party virtually sweeping the May parliamentary polls in the state. Today she is in a jail in Bangalore with no certainty that she would be able to return to power. Under a Supreme Court judgement, any public official, given an imprisonment of more than two years will not only lose her position but will also not be able to contest for six years after the punishment is over. In other words, she will not be able to lead the party in the next elections due in 2016. Of course, if the conviction is set aside by a higher court, she will be able to bounce back to power. Given the seriousness of the disproportionate assets case, it is unlikely that the conviction would be stayed, let alone overturned. There are incriminatory documents of several landed property acquisitions and solid assets like gold and bullion recovered from her bungalow. They are together worth $11 million. It took 18 years for the law to catch up with her, though some sympathise with her because the punishment came so late. The point is that she had done everything possible to delay the trial forcing the Supreme Court to transfer the hearing to a special court in Bangalore. There, too, she used all the legal stratagems available to a wealthy and resourceful defendant to delay justice. Any claim that she should have been treated less harshly because of the delay is like the claim made by a person accused of both matricide and patricide that he being an orphan deserved sympathy. Delay apart, the punishment needs to be welcomed as it gives a signal to all those who misuse power to line their pockets. There is some merit in the argument that at 66, Jayalalithaa was a more mature and seasoned administrator than she was two decades ago when she went about her illegal activities with a brazen assurance. Under the law, subsequent good conduct did not mitigate a person’s previous bad conduct. Now the big question is how she would be able to control the administration in Tamil Nadu from the jail. When the then Bihar chief minister Laloo Yadav was sent to jail, he saw to it that his semi-literate wife Rabri Devi succeeded him as chief minister. It is a well-known secret that he controlled the government from the jail. Even when he was shifted to a jail in Ranchi in neighbouring Jharkhand state, he continued to manage the affairs of Bihar with Rabri Devi just signing on the dotted lines. Jayalalithaa is a spinster and she does not have any close relatives. She has, instead, a trusted man in O Panneerselvam who has been sworn in as her successor. It was Panneerselvam whom she turned to when following a Supreme Court stricture in 2001, she had to resign as chief minister. Throughout the period he remained as chief minister he never sat on the CM’s chair. It was reminiscent of the Ramayana story of Bharat not sitting on the throne of Ayodhya when his elder brother and ruler Lord Rama was sent to the forest on a 14-year exile. Since the court had transferred only the trial to Karnataka, she may be able to get herself transferred to a Tamil Nadu jail. She will leave no stone unturned to fight her legal battle right up to the Supreme Court. Until now, the general perception in India was that politicians would never be caught for their involvement in corruption. Nor would they be punished. R. Balakrishna Pillai of Kerala was, perhaps, the first former minister to be sent to jail for corruption. The last in the series is Jayalalithaa while the fate of some others like A. Raja, former Union minister, and Kanimozhi, daughter of Jayalalithaa’s predecessor M Karunanidhi, involved in the multi-billion dollar 2G scam, has been hanging in the balance. All this redounds to the credit of the Indian system that retribution will surely catch up with the guilty. Courtesy: Oman Tribune
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 01:54:35 +0000
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