Desperate Jaya finalises Operation Ouster

As per her tentative programme, among the persons she is to meet in Delhi are CPM general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet, Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha leaders Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Prasad Yadav, former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda.

Sources close to 10 Janpath say that her meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi, if at all, would depend largely on the outcome of Jayalalitha’s talks with the Third Front leaders.

Sonia has conveyed to her that any of her demands which has a bearing on the Government either at the Centre or in Tamil Nadu, will have to be jointly dealt by the Congress and the Third Front.

Therefore, she must talk to the Third Front leaders who are determined to retain the DMK in the Front. The DMK is insisting that whether it is a Congress-led or a Third Front Government, AIADMK should be made to support it from outside.

The Congress and the Third Front realise that Jayalalitha has been pushed to the wall by the hardliners in the BJP. They first weaned away her allies (MDMK, PMK, TRC) and later did everything possible to split her 18-member group in the Lok Sabha. The BJP was trying to do to Jaya what it did to Mayawati in UP.

Realising that Jayalalitha is fighting for her survival and not for prime ministerial ambition, the Congress is playing cool. Jaya’s options are now limited. She cannot go back to the BJP, though the BJP would be too happy about it.

The Congress is disinclined to bring a motion of no-confidence. It wants Jayalalitha to withdraw support first.

According to the strategy being worked out in the opposition camp, if the President does not ask Vajpayee to prove his majority, a motion under Rule 184 be brought for setting up the JPC. The Congress-Third Front-Jayalalitha should defeat the BJP on the issue.

After becoming a minority government, the BJP would lose the right to recommend the dissolution of the House. A motion of no-confidence will be brought either in April-end or first week of May, after the Budget is passed, says a source involved in the strategy.