Why Arun Jaitley should not have met Jayalalithaa

Necessity is the mother of invention. And now the Tamil Nadu BJP is forced to invent excuses to explain away reasonably why the Union finance minister, no less, met the AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa on Sunday in Chennai. Jaitley went straight from the airport to her Poes Garden residence on a "courtesy call" that lasted 40 minutes.

Four months ago this would not have been a very big deal. The BJP and the AIADMK have always been close despite the mercurial Amma withdrawing support to the Vajpayee government, necessitating snap polls in 1999. It is the timing of the meet that has got the goat of almost everyone in Tamil Nadu's political circles. Because Jaya is now a convicted ex-chief minister of the state, in fact the first sitting CM to be convicted in a corruption case. Her appeal is ongoing in the Karnataka High Court. It is a crucial case for her. If the high court and/or the Supreme Court back the conviction, her political future will get bleak - she cannot contest an election for the next ten years. She is out on bail now and clutching at straws. And the question now being asked is, is Arun Jaitley that final straw?

"There is no legal bar on the finance minister meeting Jaya," says Mohan Parasaran, Senior Advocate and former solicitor general of India. "She is the leader of a political party after all."

Legality and propriety are two different beasts. An inflamed DMK chief Karunanidhi asked, "Is it proper for a Union minister to meet a convicted person? The cat is out of the bag," he said. His son and DMK heir apparent MK Stalin asked on his Facebook page, "Is there any integrity left in the Union government headed by the BJP? What next? Will the entire central government work towards getting her acquitted in her corruption case in the Karnataka High Court?"

Jaitley has maintained his silence on the issue, predictably so, leaving it to the local state BJP to offer explanations. "It is a meeting between a Union minister and the chief of a local party who has a significant number of MPs in Rajya Sabha," says Tamilisai Soundarrajan, state president, BJP. "Congress is blocking important bills in Rajya Sabha so we want help from other parties to pass important bills in Parliament. The BJP will never interfere in legal aspects of any case." 

The BJP, which was to announce their candidate for the Srirangam bypolls in early February, has suddenly backtracked. "We are talking to our alliance partners to decide on whether to contest the bypolls or not," says Soundarrajan. "Our district unit has now told us there is no point in contesting since 29 AIADMK state Ministers are camping in Srirangam to ensure victory and they are too powerful," she adds. Call it by any name, but this U-turn smacks of quid pro quo. So does the AIADMK's soft approach towards controversial decisions by the Modi government. Like the support for the Anti-Conversion Bill, the Insurance Bill and the silence over the ban on Jallikattu amongst others. An 18-year long court battle with the Income Tax Department too has now come to a swift end, allowing Jaya and her close aide Sasikala to get away with just paying compounded dues. All of these decisions are now being viewed in a different light by even NDA ally the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) in Tamil Nadu.

Jaitley is a powerful man in government and his meeting with Jayalalithaa at this juncture has led to speculation amongst political circles of dark conspiracies being hatched. The minister would have done well to remember the saying - "Justice must not only be done, it must also be seen to be done". Senior Supreme Court lawyer Dushyant Dave says while a Minister is free to meet whomsoever he pleases, a fundamental worry is the consequence of that meeting. "There should be no concessions in terms of the legal process," he says. "That is my only point. And for that judges should be upright and not allow politicians to interfere." Perhaps the state Congress president EVKS Elangovan summed it up best when he said, "Jayalalithaa has surrendered to the BJP for personal gains, betraying the interests of Tamil Nadu." It is now up to the BJP to explain this move away.