Though the Government of Tamil Nadu declared on Monday that retired High Court judge Arumughaswamy would probe the factors leading to the death of late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, the AIADMK Ministers continued to speak in different voices about their interactions with late Jayalalithaa after her hospitalisation.
The Government has not made public the details of the Arumughaswamy Commission of Enquiry viz the terms of references and the time frame in which the Commission has to submit the report even after 24 hours after the announcement of the setting up of the commission.
Dindigul C Sreenivasan, the Forest Minister in the Edappadi Palaniswami Government set the tone of the controversy last Friday when he declared that no Ministers in the Jayalalithaa Cabinet were allowed to meet her after she was hospitalised on September 22, 2016. “We were parroting what was instructed by VK Sasikala. We were telling lies that we saw Amma (Jayalalithaa) eating idli and sambar, Sreenivasan had told a public meeting at Madurai.
But Sellur Raju, Minister for Cooperation, sounded uncooperative on Tuesday and declared that all Ministers saw the AIADMK supremo while she was in the hospital. “All Ministers including me saw Amma while she was in hospital,” said Raju while speaking to reporters at Chennai on Tuesday. But the Minister was evasive when he was asked the exact dates on which the Ministers saw Jayalalithaa.
Interestingly, RB Udhayakumar, Minister for Information Technology said that no importance need to be given to the statements by the Ministers. “These are all personal comments and you need not take them seriously,” said Udhayakumar at Chennai.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Palaniswami and his deputy O Panneerselvam are flying to New Delhi on Wednesday for filing fresh affidavits before the Election Commission of India for the retrieval of the two leaves symbol and the name AIADMK, which were frozen by the Commission in April 2017.
The two camps led by EPS and OPS merged on September 20 and this time their trip to New Delhi would be to file a joint affidavit for the symbol and the party name.