Naadorum naadi murai seyya mannavan,/Naadorum naadu kedum (when a king fails to assess his rule day by day and set right all irregularities, the country will slowly deteriorate). A quotation from Thirukkural, couplets by Tamil saint-poet Thiruvalluvar, came in handy for the DMK against the AIADMK during the 1996 Tamil Nadu assembly elections. This was not a mere recitation of a verse by DMK president M. Karunanidhi to bring down arch rival, AIADMK General Secretary J. Jayalalithaa, who faced one of her worst defeats that year. The lines were part of a severe indictment of the Jayalalithaa regime by Madras High Court Justice M. Srinivasan, who had the habit of quoting from Thirukkural in his major judgments. It was gleefully used by Jayalalithaa’s rivals in their road shows more than a decade ago.

Over the years, it also set a trend. Scathing court observations were increasingly used in campaigns against opponents. Judicial observations emboldened political rivals to approach the courts for redress as a means of delegitimising the ruling party. Jayalalithaa’s political opponents filed a slew of corruption cases against her during her first tenure as CM. Janata Party president, Subramanian Swamy, led the queue with his petition under the Prevention of Corruption Act in the 1997 SPIC disinvestment case, in which the government was accused of divesting the SPIC shares and causing a loss of about Rs 28 crore to the exchequer. The series of court judgments against her regime during 1991-96 proved to be the catalyst for her downfall in the following state election.

... contd.