Parliament stuck…
Breaks protocol by heading to TN CM’s bungalow, has lunch with her.
Chennai : In a meeting that set political tongues wagging, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday afternoon broke protocol and headed to the imposing Veda Nilayam bungalow of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa to have lunch with her. Significantly, he did not take along any top BJP leaders along. Even Union Minister of State Pon Radhakrishnan and BJP general secretary Muralidhar Rao, who accompanied Modi, waited in the ante room while the Prime Minister met his long-time political friend from the southern State for nearly an hour.
Modi was in the city to honour handloom weavers at a function organised to celebrate the National Handloom Day. Incidentally, only on Thursday, BJP president Amit Shah was on a political mission to Tamil Nadu addressing a meeting of a Dalit outfit in Madurai.
Jayalalithaa used the occasion to present a memorandum raising a bogey of demands for the State including improving its financial health and to ascertain its rights on inter-state river disputes.
The meeting between the leaders, who share mutual admiration since 2002 and have reciprocated gestures such as attending each other”s swearing-in ceremonies in the past, is significant at a time when several key legislations have been stuck in Parliament and Tamil Nadu is headed for general elections next year.
Second line leaders of the AIADMK and the BJP were at pains to insist that the two did not talk politics but only governance and administration related issues. “As a Prime Minister, Modi met a Chief Minister of a State.
He has done this in the past too. They met only in their official capacities and you can’t give it a political colour,” claimed BJP State president Tamilisai Soundararajan.
A senior AIADMK leader also claimed that Jayalali-thaa did not wish to commit herself to an alliance with the BJP as “Madam is confident of taking the party to a back-to-back historic victory.”
Such claims apart, political observers pointed out that if the two leaders had to discuss only governance then this could have been done in New Delhi too. “It is unusual for a visiting Prime Minister to have luncheon meeting with a Chief Minister who heads a different party. Jayalalithaa had received the Prime Minister at the airport and did not attend the Handloom Day function.
Therefore, Modi”s subsequent meeting with her cannot be seen as an ordinary development,” said political commentator Margadarsi.
It is believed that Modi used the occasion to seek the support of the AIADMK”s 37 Lok Sabha MPs and 11 Rajya Sabha MPs to back crucial legislations such as the Land Acquisition Bill. “One can”t lose sight of the fact that the AIADMK had recently done a volte fact and opposed the Land Acquisition Bill in its present form,” pointed out an observer.
“While for the record the BJP may claim that it is an alternative to the Dravidian parties, the reality is that the party does not have a strong base in Tamil Nadu. The AIADMK too does not have any ally now. The parties may need each other politically but it is too early to predict if they would come together considering that both Modi and Jayalalithaa are strong personalities who are keen to chart their own course,” said another commentator.
After the lunch meeting, Modi drove down to the residence of journalist, political commentator and right wing ideologue Cho S Ramasamy and inquired about his health. Cho has been in and out of hospital in recent times and despite being an ardent supporter of BJP leader L K Advani, he was among the first to back Modi’s candidature for the Prime Minister’s job ahead of last year”s Parliamentary polls.
