Karunanidhi Completes 11 Yrs As Cm Office

Swept back to power two years ago on a massive anti-corruption mandate, 74-year-old Muthuvel Karunanidhi has become the first Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu to complete 11 years in office, albeit in four spells.

AIADMK founder M G Ramachandran, ruled the state for 10 years in three consecutive terms, broken only by a brief stint of Presidents rule in 1980.

The last few months have been no bed of roses for Karunanidhi, and the spectre of dismissal hovers over his rule, with the irrepressible AIADMK leader Jayalalitha, rejuvenated by her partys success in the recent Lok Sabha polls, demanding his ouster with growing stridency every day.

The constant pressure from Jayalalitha and her nominees in the Union cabinet notwithstanding, Karunanidhi continues to hold his ground, taking the threat of Islamic extremism seriously and going after the culprits responsible for the February 14 serial bomb blasts at Coimbatore.

Despite the phalanx of parties arrayed against him in the ruling BJP-led coalition at the Centre, and fighting to stave off the charge that he had winked at extremist activity with the minority vote bank in mind, he is confident that law and order situation does not portend invocation of Article 356 of the Constitution.

Karunanidhi assumed the mantle of leadership of DMK and the chief ministership in 1969 after the death of his mentor C N Annadurai or Anna and lost his government following imposition of Central rule in 1976. Then he had to spend 13 years in political wilderness that is as long as his arch-rival and old friend MGR was alive.

In the first election after MGRs death, Karunanidhi bounced back to power in January 1989 only to find his two-year-old regime short-circuited by Article 356 in January 1991 on the charge that he had supported the LTTE - an outlawed militant outfit.

Karunanidhi suffered his worst-ever drubbing in 1991 general elections, held within a month of Rajiv Gandhis assassination, when Jayalalitha assumed power in the state for the first time.

She sat ensconced in the chair for full five years, but in the 1996 elections, her party met its waterloo, mainly because of the alleged corruption that marked her five-year tenure as Chief Minister.

The first year of Karunanidhis return to office was remarkable for the speed with which corruption charges against Jayalalitha, her associates, erstwhile ministerial colleagues and bureaucrats who colluded with them, were investigated.

While late 1996 and early 1997 witnessed largescale caste violence in the volatile southern districts, late 1997 saw a spurt in communal temperature, with the sensitive city of Coimbatore becoming the focal point.