New Delhi,Oct. 9 :    New Delhi,Oct. 9:  From T.N. Gopalan in Chennai and Monobina Gupta in New Delhi Oct. 9: In a body blow to her plans for a political comeback ahead of next year's Assembly polls, Jayalalitha was today sentenced to three years of rigorous imprisonment in the Tansi land deal cases. The ruling effectively disqualifies the former chief minister from contesting elections for the next six years. Special judge P. Anbazhagan also ordered Jayalalitha to two years in prison in a second Tansi case. The sentences will run concurrently. The others convicted were Jayalalitha's confidante Sasikala, former minister Mohammed Asif, two senior IAS officials, R. Karpoorasundara Pandian and T.R. Srinivasan, and an official connected with the registration department, S. Nagarajan. The judge suspended the sentences till November 7 to enable the convicted persons to appeal in the high court. Though Jayalalitha walked out free, Sasikala in tow, she has to return to the court shortly to face trial in the Rs 66 crore wealth accumulation case. Jayalalitha, 52, was chief minister in 1992 when two private firms, - Jaya Publications and Sasi Enterprises - in which she was partnered by Sasikala, bought land and buildings from the state-owned Tamil Nadu Small Industries Corporation (Tansi) in a deal leading to a loss of Rs 3.5 crore to the exchequer. The judge sentenced all six accused to three years in prison in the Jaya Publications case and to two years in the Sasi Enterprises deal. Asif was acquitted in the second case. The conviction is the second against the ADMK chief who was voted out of office in 1996 in the wake of a slew of corruption charges. In February, an anti-corruption court sentenced her to one year's rigorous imprisonment in the Pleasant Stay Hotel case on the grounds that she favoured a property developer to illegally build the hotel in Kodaikanal during her term in office. Jayalalitha appealed against the February conviction and is free pending the result of the appeal. But today's verdict could be more damaging to her career than the earlier judgment. Unless she is exonerated by a higher court, Jayalalitha will not be able to contest elections for six years. The Tamil Nadu Assembly polls are slated for early next year. The Representation of People's Act says 'any person convicted of any offence and sentenced to imprisonment of not less than two years will be disqualified from the date of such conviction and will not be allowed to contest for six years since his or her release'. The Election Commission has, in recent years, enforced this provision by making it mandatory for all prospective candidates to sign a declaration while filing their nomination papers that they have not been convicted for any offence. Moments after reaching her Poes Garden residence following the ruling, Jayalalitha indefinitely postponed the ADMK general council meeting, on the electoral strategy, scheduled for tomorrow. Jayalalitha remained glum right through the proceedings today. She, however, gave a hiding right in the court hall, after the judgment was delivered, to the counsel for one of the IAS officials in the dock. Apparently, he had told the court that his client had only executed the orders of the chief minister, turning the knife deeper in her wound. The conviction in the Tansi case comes after years of courtroom wrangling between the prosecution lawyers and Jayalalitha's battery of legal eagles. The defence filed nearly 100 interlocutory petitions for adjournment. Sasikala had demanded translation of all the documents in Tamil, fought all the way to the Supreme Court and succeeded. When everybody else implicated in the 48 cases in the special courts demanded an equal treatment, the government had to employ an army of translators at a whopping cost of Rss 45 lakh. A petition was then filed that reservation norms were not followed in the appointment of the translators. The plea was dismissed. After the papers were translated, Sasikala sought more time to go through the Tamil documents as she claimed she was suffering from an eye injury sustained some years ago. Finally on the day Anbazhagan ordered the framing of charges in February 1999, Asif obtained a stay from the Madras High Court on the plea that the special judge was biased against the accused. High court Justice S.S. Subramani, who had granted the stay, made some caustic remarks against Anbazhagan, saying he had called on him and tried to influence him. As the controversy deepened, Justice Subramani was shifted to another bench, and Asif's petition was posted before Justice R. Shanmugam who finally ordered the framing of charges. Jayalalitha, in turn, was discharged from the case by the high court, but the Supreme Court overturned the ruling.