Amma : Jayalalitha (R.I.P )

Jayalalithaa Jayaram (24 February 1948 – 5 December 2016). Learn all about her.

Jayalalithaa Jayaram (24 February 1948 – 5 December 2016) was an Indian actor and politician who served five terms as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, for over fourteen years between 1991 and 2016. From 1989 she was the general secretary of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), a Dravidian party whose cadre revered her as their Amma (mother) and Puratchi Thalaivi (revolutionary leader), among other honorifics.

In 1991 Jayalalithaa became chief minister, Tamil Nadu's youngest, for the first time. She earned a reputation for a punishing work ethic and for centralising state power among a coterie of bureaucrats; her council of ministers, whom she often shuffled around, were largely ceremonial in nature. Despite an official salary of only a rupee a month, Jayalalithaa indulged in public displays of wealth, culminating in a lavish wedding for her foster son in Madras in 1995. In the 1996 election, the AIADMK was nearly wiped out at the hustings; Jayalalithaa herself lost her seat. The new Karunanidhi government quickly filed several corruption cases against her, and she had to spend time in jail. Her fortunes revived in the 1998 general election, as the AIADMK became a key component of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government; her withdrawal of support toppled it and triggered another general election just a year later.