Her priorities, as Chief Minister, are to restore law and order, for citizens “to live in peace and pursue livelihood without any fear” of intimidation or deprivation of immovable property, to rescue the state’s finance from ruin, and provide efficient governance upholding the principle of “serving the poor”. She would improve delivery of services, plugging leakages and eliminating corruption. She is focussing on the state’s chronic power shortage which has hit farmers, business and consumers alike and has written to the Prime Minister requesting his intervention to secure an additional 1,000 MW of power between now and May 2012 even as the state government makes efforts to improve energy efficiency and reduce supply gap to some extent.

Ms. Jayalalithaa hopes to build “smooth” relations with the Centre, and her first visit to New Delhi on June 13-14 was mainly to meet the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and apprise him of the new Government’s priorities and seek Central assistance in her plans to restore the state’s economy and fiscal health and re-establish its lead as a well-governed state and as an important destination for investors. She supports the Centre's tax reform without compromising on fiscal autonomy of states and wants the GST model designed such as would not erode the state's revenues, the sales tax being the main source.

The AIADMK leader is also expected to take up with the Prime Minister the deplorable status of Tamils in Sri Lanka, as internally displaced persons even two years after the war to crush LTTE. Consistent with her tough line on this issue all along, the newly-elected Assembly voted unanimously to urge the Centre to impose economic sanctions on Sri Lanka, also indicted in a UN report for 'atrocities' during the war, as long as displaced Tamils are not resettled in their original areas and accorded equal rights. Ms. Jayalalithaa has also demanded protection of Indian fishermen’s rights around the Katchatheevu island. The National Security Adviser Mr Shivshankar Menon met Ms. Jayalalithaa on June 9 on his way to Colombo leading a high-powered delegation for discussions with the Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa.

In mid-May, the Congress President Ms. Sonia Gandhi greeted the AIADMK leader on her magnificent victory. The humiliating defeat of the DMK-Congress alliance in the April elections to the State Assembly, attributed largely to the 2G spectrum scam, had raised the possibility of new political alignments in case the DMK leader Mr Karunanidhi decided to withdraw his partymen in the UPA Government in protest against CBI actions forcing his daughter Ms. Kanimozhi, Rajya Sabha MP, also to stand trial in the spectrum allocation case, besides the principal accused, Mr A Raja, former Telecom Minister.

Notwithstanding his bitterness against the Congress, which he holds partly responsible for the electoral setback and for his own discomfiture at present, Mr Karunanidhi has decided not to let emotions prevail, especially with powerful AIADMK hovering over them all. For the record, he told newsmen, “we have no complaint against them (Congress). We never believed in using the government to interfere in the judicial process”. While not clarifying what he had meant by his earlier remark on “bad company” leading to disaster, he quipped, what led to the defeat of DMK was not spectrum but “the attempts by some Brahmins”.

DMK leaders hope Ms. Kanimozhi would get some relief on her appeal to the Supreme Court. The DMK General Council has been called to meet in July to take stock of post-election developments. Amid DMK vacillations, the “Congress Sandesh', the party organ editorially called for a “relook” at the party strategy in the South as it must not lose its vote-bank due to “mistakes of its coalition partners”.

Ms. Jayalalithaa’s 34-member Cabinet has twenty new faces with key portfolios entrusted to old-timers like Mr. O. Panneerselvam (Finance), K A Sengottaiyan (Agriculture) and N R Viswanathan (Electricity). She has revamped the administration with a wholesale shake-up of officialdom and moved new faces into senior positions to ensure effective governance in maintenance of law and order and delivery of services and welfare benefits to the people.

While AIADMK commands 150 seats, the DMDK by cine-star Vijay Kant takes the next place with 29 seats, pushing the fallen DMK behind (23 seats). Both DMDK, now recognized as a state party, and the Left (19 seats), constituents in the AIADMK-led alliance, have decided to function as “constructive opposition” and have welcomed policies outlined in Governor Surjit Singh Barnala’s opening address to the new T N Assembly (June 3). Mr Karunanidhi has taken the oath as member but did not attend the week-long session.

Ms. Jayalalithaa, functioning from the 17th century Fort St. George, rejected shift to the new Secretariat-Assembly complex – the Rs. 1,000 crore dream project of Mr. Karunanidhi, which he got opened by the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh in March last. She said the building was still under construction and lacked even basic facilities for the entire government to function. But in view of allegations of 'excess and wasteful expenditure' and “deficient standards” of construction, the Governor's address announced an enquiry commission under a retired judge of the High Court would be constituted to go into the matter. Mr Karunanidhi has duly flayed Ms. Jayalalithaa for sticking to the British-built fort, 'symbol of slavery'.

The Governor also announced withdrawal of some of the prized schemes of the Karunanidhi Government in the fields of education, housing and health insurance, which would apparently be substituted with better options. Government intended to carry out a thorough review of projects undertaken by DMK before new policies on infrastructure, environment and education would be unveiled. The AIADMK Government has also decided to nationalize multi-crore cable TV business and revive the state-run Arasu Cable TV Corporation. Ms. Jayalalithaa scrapped Mr Karunanidhi’s free colour TV scheme on which about Rs. 4000 crores had been spent and decided that the lately procured 1.27 lakh CTVs would be distributed to orphanages, government schools and hospitals, village panchayats and health centres. Ms. Jayalalithaa's own freebies like fans, mixies, grinders and laptops for students would begin to be distributed from September 15.

The Assembly by a resolution ruled out a revival of the Legislative Council, abolished in 1986 but sought to be created by DMK from time to time. Ms. Jayalalithaa charged that Mr Karunanidhi had wanted the Council to accommodate his family members and “flatterers”, and asserted DMK would no longer be able to bring it up again, because “the sun (rising sun - emblem of DMK) has set and it will not rise again”. (IPA)