M Karunanidhi urges Vidyasagar Rao to give info on Jayalalithaa's health to people

Chennai: DMK chief M. Karunanidhi on Friday demanded that Governor Vidyasagar Rao should take steps to ensure that the true health condition of Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa is revealed to the people with appropriate evidence through the media. In a strongly worded statement here, he pointed out that the Governor had not visited the CM even though she has been in hospital for a week now.

Keeping her health condition under wraps is triggering rumours in social media, he said and added that it would not be improper to release her pictures at the Apollo Hospital to clear the confusion and quell the rumours, especially when reports came out that she was discharging the government duties from the hospital bed.

The state information department had on September 27 claimed the CM had that evening held an hour-long meeting in her Apollo hospital room with chief secretary, advocate general and other senior officials on the Cauvery issue and dictated her speech to be read out at the meeting convened by the Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharati in Delhi (on Sept 29).

If the CM had indeed held such a meeting, it would be most appropriate for the government to release those photographs through the media, said Karunanidhi, pointing out that since it had been the usual practice for the state information department to release pictures of even her routine meetings in the past, not doing so in this critical time would only lead to unpalatable rumours spreading like wildfire and causing public confusion through the social media.

The DMK chief referred to a recent media report which recalled how rumours on CM's health were scotched when MGR had been hospitalised in Apollo in 1984; his health minister Dr H V Hande would hold daily media briefings at the hospital. But now, neither the health minister nor the state chief secretary have followed norms to come forward with any statement on Jayalalithaa's true condition, Karunanidhi pointed out.

He said reports, however, kept coming out that dignitaries and officials, including the Union minister Pon Radhakrishnan, had gone to Apollo but none could confirm any of them had actually met her. Even the AIADMK presidium chairman E Madhusudanan had told reporters that none were able to see her. A medical team should have been constituted since the CM had been hospitalised for over a week with persisting fever and people should have been informed about the specialists constituting it, but this had not been done.

“As the true status of Jayalalithaa's health is being kept secret, all kinds of undesirable statements are being spread as rumour by some vested interests. Her photographs in hospital should have been released at least to put a stop to these rumours,” Karunanidhi said.

Referring to a recent article in the popular Ananda Vikatan that Sasikala and Sheela Balakrishnan (adviser to government) were the CM's shadows, that shadows can never be real and that people had not voted the shadow to rule them, the DMK chief quipped: “We must not permit if attempts are made to misuse the Constitution”.

Referring to the repeated police warnings that rumour mongers would be punished, the DMK chief said the cops had not spotted a single case so far.
He also said the government was yet to respond to a recent demand from PMK founder S. Ramadoss that a video of the CM in hospital should be made public.

Though he differed with her on principles, he sincerely wished Jayalalithaa speedy recovery so she could resume normal work, said Karunanidhi, while stressing that as the Constitutional head of the state, Governor Vidyasagar Rao should intervene and take steps to ensure that the government came out with facts on the CM's hospital treatment so as to stop rumours.