With the curtains coming down on the Tansi and Pleasant Stay Hotel cases, one of the most acrimonious and closely contested legal battles in recent history has come to a dramatic end. But to deem the above as purely confined to the judiciary would be puerile.
On the contrary, the issue only spilled over to the judiciary from the political cauldron of the nineties of the last century when the prevailing mood amidst most politicians of the State was to somehow keep Jayalalithaa away from power, come what may, for whatever reasons.
The cases against Jayalalithaa, right from the time they were initiated by her eternal (albeit with a brief respite, in between) foe, Subramaniam Swamy when she was in power to the advent of the DMK regime which gleefully picked up the threads, to the present scenario culminating in her summary acquittal, have witnessed several ups and downs, often swinging like the pendulum from one extreme to another, but always with a matching upheaval in the political tide too. Every milestone in this case has had its political impact and needless to say, the HC ‘ s clean chit to her will have a telling effect on the political climate of the State and the country too.
It truly redounds to the credit of Jayalalithaa that she had withstood the legal as well as political onslaught of the two cases with great tenacity and unflinching perseverence which is possible only when a person is totally convinced about his or her own innocence, without an iota of self-doubt. Right from day one, she has been maintaining that the cases were foisted against her by a vindictive DMK regime and that she would prove her innocence in the court of law.
With the current HC verdict, which has summarily rejected all charges against her and overturned the earlier judgement of the Special Court by even dubbing it as being prejudicial to her and the other accused, Jayalalithaa in a sense appears to have made her final tryst with destiny, in which she had believed all along. Of course, she also believes it was an act of God, something a politician hailing from a Dravidian party does not usually say in public.
One must appreciate her for not being a hypocrite by openly displaying her faith in the Almighty, unlike the yellow towel brand of leaders who lead double lives, not to speak of their double-tongues. One can only agree with her, for if she had triumphed despite such onerous political odds, under such immense pressure and also in the face of an unprecedented political opposition which was prompted by personal hatred and jealousy, then truly her victory falls in the realms of the impossible that only providence can make happen. This is said not to take the credit away from Jayalalithaa, for, the five-year legal ordeal was more like a penance for her which she pursued with single-minded devotion. After all, God helps only those who help themselves!
To interpret the judgement purely from an electoral point of view would be belittling its real import. May be if the HC had just commuted the sentences in a way that offset Jayalalithaa ‘ s earlier disqualifications and enabled her to contest the elections, such a course would have been natural and so, pardonable. A verdict on those lines may have helped her electorally but would not have advanced her moral claim to rule the State.
But what has happened now is the wholesale rejection of the guilty verdict handed over by a trial court, thereby putting at rest, the mal-propaganda of a biased press and also erasing all the unfair stigma that was attached to her by her political foes, before the polls when her candidature was rejected and after the assumption of office by her in May.
In this context, the learned HC judge ‘ s various observations regarding several points of law, particularly, in the Tansi case merit study. It has now been unequivocally declared by the HC that there has neither been a conspiracy or sinister motive, nor was the sale price detrimental to the exchequer; that the concept of market value as propounded in this case is grossly ill-conceived besides being prejudicial to the accused and in any case, the Tansi land cannot be deemed to be owned by the Government, a tenet the Supreme Court itself has acknowledged.
Also the HC has held that the Code of Conduct cannot be invoked here and that, at any rate, does not have legal sanctity. Such sweeping statements vis-a-vis the very foundations of the case, besides reflecting the HC ‘ s total disagreement with the way the trial court has handled the whole affair, also makes one ponder over the motives of those who first brought it to the court. The trials in the press and also by every politician worth his name were based on these ‘facts’ which now stand demolished.
The DMK regime ‘ s eagerness to see its arch rival behind bars and also in political oblivion apparently got the better of legal prudence. That the trial court saw eye to eye with the prosecution is of no consequence now and could be dismissed as a legal inconsistency that is better left undebated, though it would need some effort and a lot of amnesia to achieve that because of the political storm and the electoral confusion, not to speak of the constitutional crises, that it precipitated.
Indeed it is a popular fad to say in these troubled times that the country ‘ s teeming millions are the victims of their self-seeking politicians and that the people of the nation need to be protected from the viles of their own representatives. But here is a case of a politician, a Chief Ministerial candidate at that, being unfairly put to great disadvantage, electorally and politically, by a flawed system that is susceptible to be manipulated by highly motivated and persevering enemies.
That they succeeded in their mischievous endeavour this far is a travesty; and that the people ‘s verdict as well as Jayalalithaa ‘ s own faith in her innocence, has found judicial ratification means that the injustice meted out to her stands largely rectified, for one cannot wholly reverse the past.
After her resounding victory at the hustings, wherein the abstract but oft invoked people ‘ s court exonerated her, it should indeed seem doubly sweet for her that the real courts too have followed suit!