Jayalalithaa’s niece, Deepa Jayakumar has a love-hate relationship with politics

Deepa Jayakumar, the niece of late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, recently announced her decision to quit politics. She said she was unable to bear the harassment by her followers and called her political journey a “bad experience”.

Taking to Facebook, Deepa recently slammed her party workers for calling her and husband Madhavan repeatedly, even as she had told them that her faction “MGR Amma Deepa Peravai” doesn’t exist anymore and that it had been merged with AIADMK.  She alleged she was being harassed unnecessarily and asked her party members to join AIADMK or any other political party and not to disturb her anymore.

Deepa Jayakumar was born to Vijayalakshmi and Jayakumar (Jayalalithaa’s brother) on October 10, 1974. She has a brother Deepak Jayakumar, who is currently residing in Jayalalithaa’s Poes Garden residence. Deepa did her schooling in Chennai and completed her MA in International Journalism from Cardiff University in the UK.

After Jayalalitha’s death in 2016, the AIADMK party found itself in a bad shape. O Panneselvam, who is the current Deputy Chief Minister of the state, came out all guns blazing against Sasikala, who was then elected by the AIADMK legislators unanimously to become the new leader of the party. OPS termed his fight against Sasikala faction as ‘Dharma Yutham’ and said he was compelled to quit the Chief Minister’s post and felt humiliated. Under these circumstances, Deepa had a fallout with the Sasikala faction.

“Deepa wasn’t on good terms with Sasikala for many reasons. The animosity between them turned bitter when Sasikala prevented Deepa from seeing Jayalalithaa in Apollo Hospital. After Jayalalithaa’s death, when reports started to emerge that Sasikala is going to take over the party, Deepa approached OPS and expressed her wish to join his faction of the party. Though OPS welcomed Deepa, he wasn’t ready to offer her a senior position in the party. Despite several attempts, Deepa was not able to acquire a key position in AIADMK and thus she started her party with a belief that the true Amma loyalists will support her,” a source close to Deepa said.

On February 24, 2017, Deepa floated her political outfit “MGR Amma Deepa Peravai,” on the occasion of her aunt Jayalalithaa’s 69th birth anniversary. She said she joined politics to save the people of Tamil Nadu from traitors and she would continue to work as Jayalalitha’s political heir.

A resemblance to Jayalalithaa worked in favour of Deepa. The AIADMK cadres who were caught in a confused state after the Sasikala-OPS brawl rooted for Deepa to take over the party.

In 2017, Deepa took her first political plunge by filing her nomination for the bye-elections to Radhakrishnan Nagar constituency of Chennai, which was represented by Jayalalithaa. The bypoll which was initially scheduled on April 12 was cancelled by the Election Commission after the IT officials claimed that they have found evidence of bribery in the constituency. The elections were scheduled again on December 21 and nominations were invited by the EC. Unlike earlier, Deepa’s nomination got rejected by the Returning Officer as her affidavit was not in proper order and it was reported that Deepa left the section of ‘Details of Assets and Liabilities’ blank.

Deepa’s political aspiration started to get diluted after the rejection of her nomination. She removed her husband Madhavan from the party accusing him of misusing the party’s funds and then after a few weeks, she invited him again into the party. Raja, her driver, and confidante were elevated to the top position in her party, then were removed only to rejoin her in a few days. Her political moves turned nothing but into a laughing stock in public.

During the last six months, she became inactive and gave statements only through social media. Under these circumstances on the July 30, Deepa posted on her account that she was quitting active politics.Vetriselvi aka Jayanthi, who claims to be the one who initiated the ‘Deepa Peravai’ across the state, said their time and money would have been saved if Deepa’s decision to quit politics had come a long time ago.

“After Amma’s death, I quit AIADMK. In 2016, we formed a Peravai for Deepa and added a lot of members. We believed Deepa to be our leader after Amma’s demise. I spent a lot of money registering our committee, organizing meetings, erecting banners, adding members, etc., but all these went in vain.”

Speaking to the indianexpress.com, Jayanthi alleged that Deepa failed to make use of an opportunity that could have brought significant change in her political career. “Only Madhavan showed some interest and worked for the welfare of the Peravai. She has now announced that she has quit politics, but when was she active in politics? We invested our time and energy in return for nothing, we have dismantled the Deepa Peravai and have returned to AIADMK,” Jayanthi said.