D. Jayakumar, Fisheries Minister, has been a prominent face of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in north Chennai. Elected from Royapuram five times, Mr. Jayakumar asserts that the existing arrangement of collective leadership has found acceptance among workers of the party. He dismisses the contention that his party is BJP’s ‘B’ team and accuses T.T.V. Dhinakaran of joining hands with the DMK. Excerpts from an interview on Friday:
What are the issues being raised by the ruling party, which is facing the R. K. Nagar byelection sans a towering leader?
We are doing everything to translate into a reality Amma’s (Jayalalithaa) dream and goal that the party should run for 100 years and the government should carry on her agenda of people-centric policies and schemes. We are running the party and the government smoothly. We are highlighting Amma’s achievements. After Amma got elected [from R K Nagar in 2015], the coverage for the provision of basic amenities has gone up from 40% to 80%. She had laid the foundation stone for a ₹100-crore bridge on Cochrane Basin road, which will be executed. Besides, R. K. Nagar is a traditional bastion of the AIADMK.
During Thalaivar’s [M G Ramachandran] time, in the 1977 Assembly elections, the only constituency that the party won in Chennai was R. K. Nagar. We will definitely win the constituency by a huge margin.
What is your response to the perception that rebel leader T.T. V. Dhinakaran will cut into votes of the AIADMK substantially? One opinion poll has even predicted that he will emerge victorious.
Surveys need not be taken seriously. People are the best judges. I feel that the DMK and T.T.V. [Dhinakaran] are colluding with each other in working against us. Would any genuine, sincere follower of Amma contest against ‘two leaves,’ the symbol given by Thalaivar to us? His ultimate goal is to ensure that the AIADMK’s votes are split so that the DMK wins.
How do you view the challenge being posed by the DMK, which is contesting the byelection with the support of many parties, including the Congress, Left, VCK and MDMK?
For a byelection, if they (DMK) are taking so many parties along with them, this only shows their weakness. As far as the AIADMK is concerned, we had won many elections single-handedly. So, we are not concerned about how many allies they have.
Is E. Madhusudanan, the AIADMK’s septuagenarian nominee, able to cope with the fight from other candidates, who are younger than him?
Age is no factor in politics and I can tell you a number of veterans who emerged victoriously in elections.
How do you rebut the charge that the AIADMK is the ‘B’ team of the BJP?
It is the DMK and Mr. Dhinakaran who are seeking to create such a picture artificially. We are being friendly with the Centre only to get funds from the latter for policies and schemes that will help our State’s expeditious development. But, what was the track record of the DMK? They [DMK] had only fought for plum portfolios at the Centre. What did they do when the Union government was dependent on them for survival? Is the present Union government dependent on us for survival? Yet, we are making efforts to get approvals from the Union government. The other day, [Union Minister for Shipping and Highways] Nitin Gadkari came here and announced schemes for ₹ 1 lakh crore.
(To read the full interview, go to http://bit.ly/2ARYP17)
