Jaya leaves for Delhi

(January 24, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa today left for Delhi by a special flight. She will participate in the diamond jubilee celebration of the Election Commission tomorrow.

Political leaders cutting across various parties are expected to participate. As for as Tamilnadu politics is concerned, speculations is rife that Jayalalithaa is expected to hold a secret meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

The last time she met Sonia was more than a decade ago on 15 April, 1999, a day after the AIADMK pulled out of the A B Vajpayee- led coalition regime.

With just one year left for the crucial Assembly elections in the State, the AIADMK supremo is keen on establishing a rapport with the Congress in a bid to come back to power in the State.

If the meeting materialises, it would cause political ripples in Tamilnadu, where the ruling DMK is in a tie-up with the Congress.

However, it is said that Sonia has given instructions to the partymen in Tamilnadu that the alliance with DMK would continue as far as Karunanidhi is active in politics.

Hence, party men have been asked not to criticise the DMK government and discuss about the alliance with other parties.

Meanwhile sources in AIADMK said that party MPs V Maitreyan and M Thambidurai, left for Delhi in advance to fix up appointments for their party chief with Congress president and other leaders.

Jayalalithaa is keen on a AIADMK-Congress-Left-MDMK alliance in the State for 2011 elections. The relationship between Jayalalithaa and Sonia Gandhi has turned sour since 1999.

Though the AIADMK and the Congress entered into an alliance for the 1999 Lok Sabha elections and the 2001 Assembly polls, the two leaders did not come together for a joint campaign.

The relations between the two parties hit an all-time low when the AIADMK supremo, who has raised Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin issue several times to oppose her candidature for Prime Ministership, made virulent attack on the Congress president during her campaign for the 2004 Lok Sabha polls.

President Pratibha Patil will inaugurate the EC’s diamond jubilee celebrations and in the wintry Delhi, political observes are keen to see how Jayalalithaa and Congress president are going to iron out their differences.