Jain report is old story: Karunanidhi

Addressing mediapersons at the Secretariat, he asserted that neither he nor the DMK will be “disheartened by this kind of propaganda”. Adding that “we will face any challenge”, he expressed confidence that the stability of the United Front Government at the Centre, of which DMK is a constituent, will not be affected by the report. He said that it would be a “big fraud in politics” if the panel’s report was leaked or used to “harass” DMK.

Pointing out that the published matter consisted of only extracts, which too had been reported by various newspapers from their respective angles, he said that proper details will be obtained only after the commission’s full report was released. He strongly suspected a motive behind the publication of the extracts.

Describing the “disinformation campaign” carried out by the Congress-AIADMK alliance, he said that the parties had gone to the extent of printing posters with photographs of former prime minister VP Singh, the former National Front chairman, late NT Rama Rao, and Karunanidhi claiming that they were responsible for the assassination.

The acquittal of former DMK minister Subbulakshmi Jagadeesan in the EPRLF leader Padmanabha assassination case vindicated the DMK stand that it had no role to play, he said. Replying to a query if the party would suffer any political damage because of the report, he tersely said, “Your wish will not be fulfilled…No one can damage the DMK”.

Denying some of the specific charges made in the report, he said that the intelligence reports on which the Commission appeared to have relied, had been “doctored by the Chandra Shekhar government to prepare ground for dismissal of the DMK government in January 1991”. Many leaders, including himself, had deposed before the Jain Commission. He had also given his version after the deposition of his predecessor and AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalitha.

In his submissions, he had recalled the support provided to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by India since the days of Indira Gandhi in 1981. Some magazines had given statistics and maps of the number of training camps in India for Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups, including the LTTE. The situation then prevailing was that all parties, newspapers and people supported the Lankan Tamils’ struggle. He said the Lankan Tamil problem could be divided into periods — prior to Rajiv Gandhi assassination and after — as the killing had led to loss of goodwill and support for LTTE among the people of TN.

The Chief Minister also recalled the media interviews of Jayalalitha in 1988, 1990 and 1991 in which she had supported the LTTE and demanded military action to intervene in the ethnic problem. She had specifically criticised him (Karunanidhi) for doing nothing to help the LTTE as the chief minister in 1990, he said.

He added that within a few months of the assassination of Padmanabha and others in Chennai on June 19, 1990, Jayalalitha had given an interview to The Indian Express (October 4, 1990) stating that the LTTE had not indulged in any criminal activity in the last two months that gave room for complaint in the State.

Reading out excerpts of her interview, he said that to a specific question whether the DMK government was rendering help to the LTTE, though not to the same extent as MGR did, she had said: “I see no evidence of it.”

The extracts of the commission report published in the media did not contain these points, which the DMK had presented to the Commission.