New Delhi, May 11: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today offered his greetings to Jayalalithaa after she was acquitted in the disproportionate assets case, extending overnight the lending-range of his shoulder from the east to the south.
"Honourable Prime Minister Modi spoke to Puratchi Thalaivi Amma (Revolutionary Leader Amma) and extended his greetings," an AIADMK media release from Chennai said.
An aide to the Prime Minister confirmed that Modi did call and greet Jayalalithaa. The decks have been cleared for her return as chief minister amid speculation in Tamil Nadu that she might opt for early Assembly polls.
Minutes after Karnataka High Court pronounced the verdict today, every MP of Jayalalithaa was handing out sweets and chocolates to the BJP's ministers, insisting that even diabetics have a bite. Parliamentary affairs minister M. Venkaiah Naidu, for whom sweets are taboo, was forced to oblige Amma's flock.
The exchange of courtesies followed a weekend of fellowship in Bengal where both Modi and chief minister Mamata Banerjee spoke of the virtues of "shoulder-to-shoulder" cooperation for the sake of the country.
While state governments always stand to benefit from good relations with the Centre, Modi's compulsions for reaching out to Mamata and Jayalalithaa are being traced to a realisation that the Rajya Sabha has turned out to be a far harder nut to crack than thought initially. Legislation-driven government business is getting stuck in the upper House.
The support of Mamata and Jayalalithaa, which will not be a blanket one but could be a bill-by-bill one if and when such understandings are finalised, alone cannot guarantee a smooth ride for Modi in the upper House.
However, in case Mamata and Jayalalithaa offer a buffer in times of extreme distress, it may help Modi achieve a political milestone: pull past the Congress's numbers in the Rajya Sabha.
The way battle lines are drawn in the Rajya Sabha now, the NDA has 60 MPs - way below the halfway mark of 123 in the 245-member House with one vacancy. It goes up to 62 if the PDP, the BJP's Jammu and Kashmir partner, is also counted in.
The Congress has 68 MPs in the Rajya Sabha and can count on those the UPA had nominated as well as some other allies, taking its tally to 94.
Which means the Congress and allies have 32 more members than the NDA.
There, indeed, is an unattached - and tempting - bloc of 87 MPs, which includes Mamata's Trinamul, Jayalalithaa's AIADMK, Naveen Patnaik's Biju Janata Dal and Nitish Kumar's JDU.
The BJP cannot depend on most parties in this group. At best, it can hope to strike some deals on specific issues.
However, the BJP feels that among the lot, Mamata and Jayalalithaa call the shots in states where the national party has not yet become a potent threat and that might make them more amenable to arrangements.
In the Rajya Sabha, Mamata has 12 MPs, Jayalalithaa 11, Patnaik seven and Sharad Pawar's NCP six.
The NDA cluster, along with the MPs of Mamata, Jayalalithaa, Patnaik and Pawar, can touch 98 if the regional leaders chip in on a "case-by-case" basis.
That takes Modi's tally above the Congress's 94 but it is still short of the majority milestone of 123, leaving the BJP managers to look for props elsewhere.
This presumptive scenario need not work on the land bill, either. Trinamul today restated its "vociferous" opposition to the bill.
Although Jayalalithaa shares a good rapport with Modi - she was among the few chief ministers who was decorous to him when he was a virtual political outcast - the southern leader is opposed to the goods and services tax bill.
But the Centre's decision today to steer clear of a confrontation - the GST bill will probably be sent to a select committee - allowed Jayalalithaa not to reveal her cards for the time being.
Modi appears to be playing to score one goal at a time - the immediate one appears to be "isolating" the Congress and pre-empting the principal Opposition from reaching out to potential allies.
