At 67, Jayalalithaa is a political giant not only in Tamil Nadu, where she took oath as chief minister for the fifth time on Saturday, with two of her three terms punctuated by brief spells of political exile. Brand Jayalalithaa is an undeniable presence at the national level, most emphatically after last year’s national election, when her party swept 37 of Tamil Nadu’s 39 seats, making her AIADMK the third largest party in the Lok Sabha after the BJP and the Congress.
Her stunning victory in the assembly elections of 2011 had ensured that her party’s tally of 11 in the Rajya Sabha or upper house of Parliament cannot be scoffed at either, especially in times when the BJP-led central government is in a minority in the house and often depends on regional parties like Jayalalithaa’s to help it pass crucial legislation.
When Jayalalithaa was convicted in September last year in a corruption case by a Bangalore trial court, her political rivals celebrated the possibility that she would not be able to contest elections for another decade. That, they reckoned, would mean the end of the AIADMK, a party that revolves completely around its chief.
