Amma returns! Jayalalithaa takes charge as Tamil Nadu CM for the 5th time

CHENNAI: AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa left her Poes Garden residence as chief minister designate and returned as chief minister of Tamil Nadu in a matter of an hour and 17 minutes — between 10.37 am and 11.54 am — on Saturday.

After stepping down in September last year when a trial court in Bengaluru convicted Jayalalithaa and three others in a disproportionate assets case, decks were cleared for her return as chief minister when the Karnataka High Court acquitted all four of them in the case on May 11.

Authorities took great pains to keep the ceremony in which Jayalalithaa was sworn in as CM to under half-an-hour and the event unfolded with clockwork precision. Minutes before Jayalalithaa arrived at the Madras University Centenary auditorium, the venue for the grand but brief event, an announcer gave the audience a heads-up. It was an abridged event alright. The national anthem, the official duration of which is 52 seconds, lasted a skosh under 20 seconds.

An invocation to the ‘Tamil Mother’ lasted a minute. A hurried introduction of the ministers, 28 of them, followed. They bowed down to their leader before an almost furtive handshake with governor K Rosaiah on the stage. Without much ado, both the governor and Jayalalithaa were invited to the podium to complete the swearing-in. Soon after, she signed in as the CM of Tamil Nadu for the fifth time in three elected terms. Breaking convention, the ministers took oath as a chorus.