Tamilnadu decks up to reinstate Jayalalithaa; govt tight-lipped on swearing-in date

CHENNAI: A massive hoarding hailing the ‘Lion Lady’ overlooks the Marina Beach intimidatingly with a picture of the AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa standing over a pride of lions. A few hundred metres away, at the Centenary Auditorium of the Madras University, senior police officials are busy with security arrangements for a swearing-in ceremony.

And a little further, the secretariat is busy preparing invites and passes for the event. The state is ready to see another swearing-in to reinstate Jayalalithaa as the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, but no one wants to say when.

Several dates have been doing the rounds for Jayalalithaa’s swearing-in as chief minister after her acquittal in the disproportionate assets case by the Karnataka High court on May 11. Though May 23 is expected to be the day of swearing-in, there is no confirmation about this from the Secretariat or AIADMK.

Posters and hoardings showering praises on ‘Amma’, have come up all along the road from Poes Garden — where Jayalalithaa resides — to the Secretariat and along the path to AIADMK headquarters where a meeting of the party MLAs will be chaired by Jayalalithaa on Friday at 7 am.

It is almost certain that the stand-in chief minister O Paneerselvam will put in his papers to the Governor early on Friday. After that Jayalalithaa is likely to stake claim to the chief minister’s post. But there is no official word on all this yet.

A publicity department source said the invitations have been printed for the swearing-in but the date and time mentioned on the cards cannot be revealed now. The pace of work being carried out at the Madras University, the proposed venue for the big day also indicated a paucity of time and the sense that the deadline was short.

N Sathiyamoorthy of the Observer Research Foundation in Chennai said, “When it comes to the AIADMK there is always an element of secrecy involved."