Jayalalitha tries to tie up with TMC to finish DMK

AIADMK supremo Jayalalitha Jayaram is said to be keeping her political options open despite her party's ties with the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Janata Party.

While Jayalalitha is not averse to a post-poll pact with the Bharatiya Janata Party, whenever the Lok Sabha election is held, she has reportedly sent out feelers to the Tamil Maanila Congress for a pre-poll arrangement.

According to an AIADMK leader, the party is on the look out for an ally who will contribute substantially to the vote bank besides refurbishing its image. ''The TMC fits the bill, given its clean image and its 15 to 20 per cent vote bank in state politics,'' he said.

In return, the TMC is likely to get 30 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry. ''The TMC got 20 seats from the DMK last time, all of which it won. It cannot expect any more next time,'' the leader said.

In his assessment, the TMC should be able to win most of these, given the parties's combined electoral strength. ''This should give the TMC good leverage at the national-level for any post-poll negotiations.''

Simultaneously the party is also wooing the Pattali Makkal Katchi, using the good offices of Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy.

''We are sceptical about the TMC and are hence preparing our second line of defence,'' the AIADMK leader said. ''If the PMK is roped in, the alliance with the MDMK and the Janata Party will be as attractive as the one proposed with the TMC. However, the latter offers another advantage: it will be a setback for the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham which now has a tie-up with the TMC. Our enemy number one being the DMK, we would do anything to marginalise it.''

The AIADMK strategy also flows from the fact that the existing allies of the party may benefit from the alliance without in anyway contributing to the revival of the Jayalalitha leadership. ''The Janata Party and the MDMK could win a few Lok Sabha seats with our massive support. But they themselves do not have many votes in other constituencies to tie up our loose ends,'' the leader said.

TMC sources, however, outrightly denied any chance of the party joining hands with the AIADMK. ''People have not forgotten the AIADMK misrule as yet, and our own image will suffer if we join hands with them under the present circumstances,'' a party source said.

The leader also referred to party founder G K Moopanar's strategy of backing one of the Dravidian parties to annihilate the other, before the TMC could emerge as the natural alternative. ''Alternating the Dravidian partners between two elections thus goes against the very grain of Moopanar's long-term strategy,'' he said. However, the source would not confirm whether or not the party had received any AIADMK feelers.

Simultaneously, the AIADMK is trying to win over the BJP. The man behind the scene is M Natarajan, husband of Jayalalitha's controversial aide Sasikala. However, the BJP itself is keeping its options open, so that it could pick and choose its post-poll partner from the state, playing the numbers game.

EARLIER REPORT:
And now, it's Latha versus Jayalalitha