Jaya's legal team need to do a rethink

'The current impasse might be an occasion for Jayalalithaa's legal team to mull over what could have gone wrong with their strategy -- and where they could and should proceed from here,' says N Sathiya Moorthy.

At the end of the day, it is a political decision for imprisoned former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa to take, both at the personal and party levels.

It would look as if the Delhi protest by her All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham MPs on Gandhi Jayanti and her party lawyers and cadres' protest inside the Karnataka high court premises a day earlier might have sent out wrong signals all round, whatever the merit of her case, when it is taken up by the high court, and possibly the Supreme Court, if and when approached at the appropriate stage.

The Delhi scene reminded one of a similar protest staged by devotees of the two shankaracharyas of the Kanchi mutt, when the second Jayalalithaa government in Tamil Nadu had arrested them. Heading the protest at the time was former President Ramaswamy Venkataraman, otherwise believed to be politically sympathetic to her.

While the Karnataka high court premises might have had its share of campus scuffles, including the one involving the arrest of controversial former state minister G Janardhana Reddy, it may not have witnessed anything like what the AIADMK lawyers and cadres staged after Justice Ratnakala's direction on Wednesday, October 1.

In her brief order, passed after only a couple of minutes into the proceedings, Justice Ratnakala ruled that Jaya's bail application and related pleas should be heard by the regular bench handling criminal appeals, when the court reopens after the Dussehra-Bakri Id holidays on Tuesday, October 7.

The judge did not seem to share the anxiety of Jayalalithaa's lawyers that the hearing could brook no further delay, and that the vacation bench should dispose it off forthwith.

A day earlier, Justice Ratnakala could not hear the petition after Public Prosecutor Bhavani Singh submitted that he had been asked to continue from the trial court to the high court, but he had not been served with the relevant papers.

The next day, when the court took up the matter at the instance of Jayalalithaa's legal team, which by now had included Supreme Court senior counsel Ram Jethmalani, Bhavani Singh referred to the AIADMK leader's influence.

Clearly, the prosecutor was in no mood to let AIADMK theatrics, both inside and outside the court campus, to pressure the court. If the protests by AIADMK cadres across Tamil Nadu, and those by the Tamil film industry and various trades and tradesmen associations, were not enough, they were witness to slogan-shouting on the Karnataka high court premises too.

In Jayalalithaa's case, starting with expressing sympathy and solidarity with her, some protests soon began naming rival DMK chief M Karunanidhi and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Dr Subramanian Swamy, for 'foisting politically motivated cases' against their 'Amma.'

Topping it all was a resolution passed by the AIADMK-controlled municipal corporation of Vellore in northern Tamil Nadu, which said as much.

Media reports have it that Jayalalithaa's lawyers had approached the Karnataka high court registrar for fast-tracking the hearing on her petitions after Justice Ratnakala had posted it before the regular Bench. Better counsel reportedly prevailed after Jethmalani advised them not to keep confronting the judiciary.

According to those following the case almost from inception in 1996-1997, Jayalalithaa's legal team was living for the day, without strategising for the long-term, when she might have had to face the high court, even the one in Madras, or the Supreme Court.

Going by sketchy media reports on Judge Michael D'Cunha's verdict, what Jayalalithaa may require is not political protests, but a clear re-thinking of the legal strategy, if any, by her team of lawyers. These teams -- like the courts, the judges and the prosecutors in the case -- have changed often.

If in the process, one or the other Supreme Court-designated senior counsel had been engaged in the case, it has often been to argue an interlocutory petition in the Supreme Court, not to guide the legal team on the larger strategy in its entity. Or, so it seems.

The current impasse on the judicial front might be an occasion for Jayalalithaa's legal team to mull over what could have gone wrong with their strategy -- and where they could and should proceed from here.

That would involve making a clear assessment of Jayalalithaa's present situation and the judicial consequences of her pending petitions, and that which may follow.

Maybe the legal team should cut themselves off from both political influences and personal loyalty to the leader. There have been reports that senior criminal lawyers approached for advice at various stages during the course of the long years of court proceedings were never consulted again.

The 'why' of it all may have had more to do with political and personal prejudice rather than anything to do with their competence or lack of suitability in professional terms.

At least now, the legal team should take a professional view of things and guide their client accordingly -- leaving the political strategy to the political class, which in the AIADMK almost beings and ends with Jayalalithaa.

N Sathiya Moorthy, veteran journalist and political analyst, is the Director, Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter.