Dogged by controversies: Sedapatti R. Muthiah was the Surface Transport Minister in Vajpayee’s Cabinet in April 1998 when a Chennai court framed charges against him and his family in a case of allegedly accumulating wealth disproportionate to the known sources of their income. Here, he is at the court on April 6, 1998.
| Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives
Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar recently said that as the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, he had managed the one vote in favour of the Opposition, which brought down the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government on April 17, 1999. He said, “One person from the government took a different decision. And the government came down due to that vote.” However, he hasn’t revealed the name of the person.
Mr. Pawar’s claim has brought back the focus on an interesting slip-up that occurred on the historic day when Vajpayee lost the vote of confidence with 269 ayes and 270 nays. One parliamentarian — Sedappati R. Muthiah, leader of the AIADMK Parliamentary Party — forgot to cast his vote. His abstention during the crucial proceedings caused widespread surprise as it was AIADMK general secretary Jayalalitha [as her name was spelt then], who withdrew support to the Vajpayee government, forcing the Prime Minister to move the motion of confidence.
“Hours after the crucial trust vote in the Lok Sabha, which led to the fall of the Vajpayee Government, political circles were agog over the ‘decision’ of the AIADMK Parliamentary Party Leader, Mr. Sedapatti R. Muthiah, to abstain from voting. While there was no explanation either from Mr. Muthiah or from the AIADMK as to what exactly happened, it is believed that he told his party colleagues that he committed a ‘technical mistake’. But questions are being raised as to how a senior politician like him, a former Speaker in the State Assembly, could have committed such a mistake,” read a New Delhi-datelined report in The Hindu on April 18, 1999.
‘The machine failed’
Later, Muthiah told reporters that he had represented to Lok Sabha Speaker G.M.C. Balayogi that the “electronic machine failed to register his ballot”. Muthiah had said since he had used the electronic machine to cast his vote, he did not insist on the paper ballot. Reports in a section of the media said he “kept the voting slip in his pocket by mistake”.
According to a PTI report published in this newspaper, a day later, Muthiah said the possibility of any “mischief” in his vote not being recorded during the vote of confidence needed to be verified. “It [the possibility of mischief] has to be checked up,” he said, reiterating that he voted against the motion. He said that on the instructions of Jayalalitha, he had requested the Speaker to look into the matter. “I have requested the Speaker to consider the case with the help of television records,” he said.
On his return to Chennai, Muthiah hurriedly convened a press conference to explain his position and shared the printed images of the votes registered in the electronic machine on the Lok Sabha screen. However, on April 30, the Lok Sabha Secretariat rejected his request to rectify the reported “error” in the recording of his vote. Lok Sabha Secretary-General S. Gopalan wrote to Muthiah, saying, “You have already raised the matter in the House accordingly and explained your position which forms a part of the record.” The Lok Sabha Secretariat had conducted an inquiry through the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) into the alleged discrepancy between the recording of the vote as ‘n’ (for ‘no’) in the voting display board and his ‘no vote’ recorded in the computer print-out. Based on the inquiry, his claim was rejected.
Muthiah had earlier hogged the limelight for the wrong reasons. He was the Union Surface Transport Minister in Vajpayee’s Cabinet in April 1998 when a special court in Chennai framed charges against him and his family members in a case of allegedly accumulating wealth disproportionate to the known sources of their income. Accusing the M. Karunanidhi government in Tamil Nadu of foisting the case, he initially remained defiant and refused to resign as the Minister. When a journalist asked him, “What if Amma (Jayalalitha) asks you to resign,” Muthiah responded, “If Amma asks me to die, I shall die.” That evening, Jayalalitha asked him to resign, and he obeyed her command.
Nomination denied
However, Jayalalitha never forgave him for the voting day fiasco. She denied him nomination in the 1999 Lok Sabha election. A year later, she expelled Muthiah and other senior leaders S. Raghupathy (now known as Regupathy and Law Minister) and Karuppasamy Pandian from the party, accusing them of indulging in anti-party activities. Muthiah then hit out at Jayalalitha. “Mr. Muthiah accused Ms. Jayalalitha of defaming him before AIADMK partymen. The AIADMK general secretary, he said, had openly charged him with accepting a large sum of money from the BJP during the vote on the confidence motion in the Lok Sabha last year,” said a report in The Hindu dated April 16, 2000. “While the disproportionate wealth case filed against me by the Karunanidhi government relates to assets of only about ₹45 lakh, Ms. Jayalalitha has accused me of taking a far bigger amount,” he said.
Later, he moved the Madras High Court seeking to restrain Jayalalitha from interfering with his right to continue as an AIADMK member. He also prayed for a direction to her to pay him ₹10 lakh as damages for causing “the publication of defamatory allegations” against him in the party mouthpiece Namadhu MGR. Incidentally, he was replaced as the publisher of the mouthpiece. Some years later, Muthiah joined the DMK. He died in September 2022.
Published – February 25, 2025 11:10 pm IST
