SIGNALLING a rare thaw in relations between AIADMK and DMK, the two main parties in Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa Tuesday reached out to DMK leader M K Stalin, assuring him that she would have ensured a front-row seat for him at her oath-taking ceremony if she had known he would attend. Significantly, Jayalalithaa also thanked Stalin for attending the function and said: “I convey my good wishes to him and look forward to working with his party for the betterment of the state.” Stalin had been seated in the 12th row during the ceremony on Monday, prompting a furious reaction from his father and DMK supremo, M Karunanidhi, who accused the AIADMK chief of denying his party due respect. Stalin was on Tuesday named Leader of Opposition in the 234-member state assembly by the DMK-Congress alliance which claimed 98 seats in the recent elections. In a statement issued by her office, Jayalalithaa said: “I understand that Mr Stalin was seated in the block of seats intended for Members of the Legislative Assembly. I am informed that the Public Department had followed the Protocol Manual in allocating seats in the hall for the event. If this seating plan caused him any discomfiture, I would like to assure him that there was no intent to show disrespect to him or his party.” [related-post] Jayalalithaa added that if she had been informed that Stalin would be present, “I would have instructed the officers in charge of the arrangements to provide him a seat in the first row, relaxing the norms in the protocol manual”. Sources close to Jayalalithaa said Tuesday’s statement was part of a careful approach she had adopted on Monday as well by asking her party’s local leaders to avoid putting up flexboards and banners along the route to the oath-taking venue. “She had also asked her ministers and leaders to not touch her feet although one minister had still tried to do so at the venue,” said a close aide. Stalin had not attended Jayalalithaa’s oath-taking ceremony in 2011. And engagements in the past involving Jayalalithaa and DMK leaders have been loaded with political significance. Consider these: * In 2004, after the tsunami killed hundreds in the state, Stalin visited Jayalalithaa at the State Secretariat to hand over a cheque of Rs 1 crore to the victims on behalf of his party. * In 2002, Jayalalithaa, the then chief minister, ordered an amendment to protocol norms to ensure that DMK Leader of Opposition, K Anbazhagan, was seated in the front row at government functions. * During her term as CM from 2001-2006, Jayalalithaa gifted Rs 5 lakh to M K Muthu, Karunanidhi’s elder son, after he approached her seeking help for medical treatment. But the gesture was widely seen as an effort to capitalise on internal problems in the Karunanidhi family. * In 2001, when he was Chennai Mayor, Stalin attend Jayalalithaa’s oath-taking function but was again seated on the 12th row. At the time, too, Karunanidhi had expressed his displeasure at the arrangements. Asked during the recent elections about the intense rivalry between the two parties, Karunanidhi had told The Indian Express: “Until the death of MGR (former CM M G Ramachandran), we had been maintaining a reasonable relationship. After his death, the political scenario in Tamil Nadu got charged with a sense of vengeance, inhumanity and never-ending enmity.”
