Opposition parties cautious in TN

Except the allies of the ruling AIADMK, the Opposition parties that reacted strongly to the conviction of the former Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, were cautious in their approach to the conditional bail granted to her by the Supreme Court on Friday.

Union Urban Development Minister and senior BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu, who was in the city to attend a meeting, said that whether it was jail or bail, the court order had to be respected.

However, referring to the prolonged trial in the disproportionate assets case against Ms. Jayalalithaa, he said the Central government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, felt that all corruption cases should be completed swiftly, preferably in a year.

BJP State president Tamilisai Soundararajan said a bail would not mean that the conviction was cancelled. “Both the DMK and the AIADMK were tainted with corruption, and the BJP is the clean alternative to the people of Tamil Nadu,” she said.

A senior DMK leader said there was no need to react to the grant of bail. “If not today, she will secure bail next week or next month,” he said.

Nonetheless, the DMK seemed far from reconciled to the bail prospects for the AIADMK leader. On Friday morning, the party organ

Murasoli , alluding to the arguments in favour of bail for Ms. Jayalalithaa because she was an elderly woman and suffering from health problems, ran excerpts from a recent interview given to a Tamil journal by the former DMK Minister, Subbulakshmi Jegadeesan, In it, she explained how she had to undergo ordeals in prison for several months before getting bail from the Supreme Court, after she was “falsely implicated” in a case under the now defunct TADA in the 1990s.

Even PMK founder S. Ramadoss, who had issued a slew of statements since her conviction, remained silent soon after the order was flashed in the media.