63-year old Jayaraman Jayalalitha, who was described as a phenomenon in Tamil Nadu politics by the political analyst Cho Ramaswamy, will assume the role of chief minister of the state for the third time on May 15.

 

Born in Karnataka on Feb 2, 1948 in a traditional Brahmin family, she moved to Tamil Nadu along with her mother who made a career in movies. While her mother continued to act in movies, Jaya did her schooling at the Bishop Cotton Girl’s High School in Bangalore and another Christian convent, Church Park, in Chennai.

 

Though a bright student with abilities to speak fluent English, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi even in her child hood, Jaya however stepped into her mother’s shoes and started her film career at the age of 16. Her first movie was a Kannada one. Her first Tamil movie was the super hit “Vennira Aadai”.

 

Pairing up with almost all top Telugu and Tamil heroes including the legendary actors Akkineni Nageswara Rao and the late NTR and MGR, she acted in more than 100 movies, mostly in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada.

 

The super duper success of her Tamil movie “Aayirathil Oruvan”, in which she acted opposite MGR, had turned Jayalalitha into the most sought after heroine in the Tamil movie world.

 

Jaya was appointed as the Propaganda Secretary of the AIADMK in the early 1980s by its founder-leader MGR and in 1984, she entered the Rajya Sabha. In 1989, she entered the TN assembly and in 1991 she became the chief minister of the state after leading the AIADMK to victory in the wake of the then former PM Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination.

 

In 2001 elections too, she led the party to a thumping victory and became the chief minister for the second time. Critics as well as admirers describe her as a fighter to the finish and see in her the tallest Brahmin politician in a state where anti-Brahminism rules roost as part of political discourse.

 

Though she got only 61 in a house of 234 seats in the 2006 assembly elections and won only 9 out of the 39 seats in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the involvement of DMK in corruption made things easier for her in the 2011 elections.

 

She however faces toughest challenges ahead as her party’s election promises included several freebies to the people of the state. She needs lot of money to fulfill all those promises and we have to wait and see how she is going to manage the situation.