CHENNAI: Chief Minister M Karunanidhi’s fast on the Marina was reminiscent of the fast undertaken by AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa in 1992 when she was Chief Minister.
Jayalalithaa also sat on the Marina for four days demanding the appointment of a monitoring committee to oversee the implementation of the interim award of the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal.
The fast was called off on the fourth day after V C Shukla, the Union Water Resources Minister in the P V Narasimha Rao government, gave her an assurance on the setting up the monitoring committee.
While Karunanidhi chose the samadhi of his mentor, C N Annadurai, Jayalalithaa sat on a fast at the samadhi of her mentor, M G Ramachandran. Both premises are located next to each other and in 1992 too, the scene was the same -- cars of ministers, politicians and officials lined up along the road.
Unlike Karunanidhi’s fast on Monday that wound up in about six hours and did not cause much disruption to normal life in the State, Jayalalithaa’s fast extended for four days. There were protests from across Tamil Nadu, which affected bus and rail services.
However, the first Chief Minister of the State to go on a fast was MGR, who in 1981 resorted to that form of protest to put pressure on the Centre to increase the allocation of rice from the central pool.