J Jayalalithaa sacks K Malaisamy for calling her and Narendra Modi good friends

NEW DELHI: Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK expelled K Malaisamy for “anti-party activities” on Thursday, a day after the former Rajya Sabha member said the party chief and BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi were “good friends” and that his party could consider support to a BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre.

The expulsion order came even as Jayalalithaa had earlier said that she would “wait for the results of the elections” before taking any call on the matter. According to AIADMK members familiar with the matter, this could have happened because Malaisamy may not have been authorised to speak to the media.

More important, as a party leader told ET on the condition of anonymity, “Her first priority is to explore options to become prime minister herself at the head of a Third Front coalition.”

Although a state Intelligence Bureau report is believed to have estimated her party’s tally at 28 out of 39 seats in Tamil Nadu, AIADMK claims that it will get more than 32 seats and emerge as a big player at the national level.

“Jayalalithaa actually cannot open her cards before the numbers (come in). She has too many personal and political calculations to make based on actual numbers,” said N Sathiyamoorthy, director of the Observer Research Foundation in Chennai.

“On the political front she is looking at Assembly polls in 2016, and allying with the NDA would mean the consolidation of minorities with forces opposed to her. In the delicately balanced arithmetic of Dravidian polls it is not desirable,” he added.