After days of silence over the conviction of his bête-noire and former Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, DMK president M. Karunanidhi declared that even in dream she could not make a political comeback. But the DMK’s second-level leaders are not ready to share his optimism for fear that any celebration of her adversity might return to haunt them.
“As many DMK leaders face corruption charges, its district secretaries and former ministers fear she will go all out against those who seek to derive advantage from her conviction,” says a former minister.
The DMK takes solace from the belief that Jayalalithaa may not be in a position to contest in elections, though many admit that there is a sympathy factor that will favour her party.
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Of late, police personnel in the southern districts are in the news for all the wrong reasons. A few of them were suspended for involvement in illegal activities. An Inspector, Sub-Inspector (SI) and Special SI, all of the Tiruthangal station in Virudhunagar district, were suspended after several boxes of firecrackers in their custody went missing. The crackers had been found stored in an illegal godown, which was sealed. During a routine inspection of the sealed godown, the crackers, worth several lakhs of rupees, went missing though the seal was intact.
In another case, the axe fell on an SSI after investigators found that some Community Service Register receipts at the Koodal Pudur station in Madurai were forged with an official seal.
An SI at Nagamalai Pudukottai was held on graft charge and a constable in Ramanathapuram district was suspended for his attempt, under the influence of alcohol, to sexually assault a teenage boy. An SI in the district was punished after he let out his car for smuggling gold.
The Madurai rural police registered a case against an SSI for assaulting his daughter’s friend. The reason: the victim did not reveal his daughter’s love affair with a youth. The saving grace is that officials are not sparing the wrong-doers, even if they belong to their flock.
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The State’s Indian Administrative Service officers of the 1982 batch have been waiting for some time to be promoted to the grade of Chief Secretary (CS). Many of their batch mates in other States rose to the grade at least a year ago. Even in Tamil Nadu, 10 months ago, two Indian Police Service officers belonging to the 1982 batch — Ashok Kumar and S.K. Dogra — were promoted to the rank of Director-General of Police. In the case of Mr. Dogra, the promotion came hardly a few weeks before he retired. Yet, the IAS officers of the same year’s batch haven’t got the CS grade. Several seasoned officers such as C.V. Sankar (Principal Secretary, Industries), K. Gnanadesikan (Chairman and Managing Director, Tangedco) and Hemant Kumar Sinha (Principal Secretary, Higher Education) are from this batch.
One officer points out that R.K. Khanna, also of the 1982 batch and now heading the Tamil Nadu Maritime Board, is due to retire next month. Though the promotion may not make much difference to the pay, it does mean a lot for an officer post-retirement as pension will be revised when the pay hike comes into effect, he notes.
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When O. Panneerselvam was sworn in as Chief Minister, many doubted whether he would wield any power. It seems more than a few officials are of a similar view. A visit to several government offices in Coimbatore district in the past week revealed that while most of them took down the picture of the former Chief Minister, Jayaalithaa, a few replaced it with Mr. Panneerselvam’s. One official replaced a Jayalalithaa portrait with the pictures of deities. When asked about it, the officials, even those on friendly terms with reporters, refused to comment.
( B. Kolappan, S. Sundar, T. Ramakrishnan and R. Sairam )
