CHENNAI: After seven long months, AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa on Friday stepped out of her house to floral showers and led a victory march to Raj Bhavan to meet governor K Rosaiah and stake claim to form the government.
She will be sworn in as the chief minister of Tamil Nadu for the fifth time at 11am on Saturday, bringing down curtains, at least for now, on a long-drawn legal battle and its political fallout.
Although Jaya’s acquittal in the corruption case was marked with controversies, the ceremonial exercise of Jayalalithaa’s meeting with governor Rosaiah after AIADMK MLAs elected her legislature party leader at 7am on Friday was a grand affair.
No one could have missed its significance. It was meant to be a show of strength and a message to political rivals that she was back in the hot seat and very much in the reckoning in state politics for the 2016 assembly polls.
Jayalalithaa will take oath along with a 28-member cabinet, most of them old hands, including trusted O Panneerselvam (finance), Natham R Viswanathan (power) and R Vaithilingam (housing).
Highways and minor ports minister Edappadi K Palaniswami will get additional charge of forest and P Palaniappan will remain higher education minister.
Forest minister M S M Anandan and Chendur Pandian have been dropped from the cabinet. Pandian, who had been ailing for a while, had been divested of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments portfolio a few months ago.
A Raj Bhavan communication said governor K Rosaiah approved the recommendation made by ‘CM -designate’ Jayalalithaa regarding allocation of portfolios among the council of ministers.
The city seemed to burst into celebrations as Jayalalithaa, who was making a rare public appearance after the Karnataka high court acquitted her in the disproportionate wealth case on May 11, left her Poes Garden residence at 1.28pm and proceeded to Raj Bhavan.
Her cavalcade cruised along the 12km stretch from her residence and back as thousands of frenzied cadres on either side of the route hailed her and shouted slogans.
Bands played the traditional ‘chenda melam’ and cadres threw yellow marigold flowers and rose petals, waved flags and hailed her as ‘Puratchi Thalaivi’ (revolutionary leader) and ‘Nirandara Muthalvar’ (permanent chief minister). Jayalalithaa in green sari, sitting in the front seat of her car, waved constantly or joined her palms in greeting, her smiling face visible through the windscreen. Cops had to push back surging crowd.
After calling on the governor, Jayalalithaa garlanded the statues of three Dravidian leaders — AIADMK founder and mentor M G Ramachandran, DMK leader C N Annadurai and DK leader Periyar E V Ramasamy.
Earlier, governor Rosaiah invited Jayalalithaa to form the government after Panneerselvam handed over his resignation to make way for the party chief to take over. The governor accepted the resignation and requested the CM and his council of ministers to function until the alternatives were in place. He then invited Jayalalithaa to form the ministry at the earliest and requested her to send the list of persons to be appointed as ministers with their portfolios.
At 7am meeting presided over by AIADMK presidium chairman E Madhusoodanan, the 148 MLAs unanimously adopted a resolution electing Jayalalithaa as their leader. Panneerselvam proposed Jayalalithaa’s name and power minister Natham Vishwanathan seconded it, drawing claps and cheers. Panneerselvam then announced he would be resigning from his post as CM. The occasion was marked by much cheer with seven of the rebel MLAs from Vijayakanth’s DMDK too present to show solidarity with the AIADMK chief.
A visibly elated cooperative minister Sellur K Raju said, “This is the happiest day of our life.”
