After former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s confident Sasikala Natarajan is making all out moves to get hold of AIADMK’s leadership, besides keeping eye to grab Chief Minister’s position at an earliest opportunity, now all focus is turning towards her husband N Natarajan, who seems to be having great manipulative and lobbying skills.
N Natrajan is dubbed as the Amar Singh of Tamil Nadu, who is said to have links with the DMK, Congress and even the BJP, had been banished by Jayalalithaa. He is being described as Sasikala’s non-resident husband after Jayalalithaa had declared him persona non grata in Veda Nilayam, her palatial house in Poes Garden.
Now he managed to sneak into the corridors of power since Jayalalithaa was admitted to the Apollo Hospital. BJP MP L Ganesan was seen introducing Natarajan, a known sympathiser of LTTE, to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at Rajaji Hall.
In 1975, Sasikala married Chennai-based M Natarajan, a DMK worker and a mover and shaker in political circles. He was then an assistant public relations officer, a post usually filled by political appointees. Meanwhile, Sasikala cultivated rapport with Jayalalitha. Natarajan was not around as their relationship grew.
But in 1986, he played the role of an intermediary between Jayalalithaa and MGR after the two leaders had a fallout. After MGR’s death in 1987, when Jayalalithaa was politically side-lined and had few friends, Sasikala stood by her. She shifted to Poes Garden in 1988 along with Natarajan, by now a known face in the Capital’s political circles for his influence among both the DMK and AIADMK camps.
In 1989, Jayalailthaa ejected Natarajan, suspecting that he was trying to take over the party. Sasikala chose to stay back at Poes Garden. In 2011, Jayalalithaa had expelled all of Sasikalaa’s family members from the party. Two months later, Natarajan was arrested by the Thanjavur police, ostensibly in a land grab case.
Though Jayalalithaa sent him out from her sight, he continued to exert influence over party men and the bureaucracy. “Every election there would be a queue of AIADMK ticket aspirants at his gates,” said an associate.
