UPDATE

A Chief Minister's exit

ON October 19, P. Shanmugham resigned as the Chief Minister of Pondicherry after he failed to ensure his election to the Assembly within the mandated six months. N. Rangasamy, Public Works and Agriculture Minister in Shanmugham's Cabinet, was subsequently elected leader of the Congress Legislature Party.

T. SINGARAVELU
P. Shanmugham handing over his resignation letter to Lieutenant Governor Rajni Rai.

Shanmugham's resignation was caused mainly by the souring of the Congress(I)'s relationship with the Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). When the Congress(I)-TMC alliance won a majority in the Assembly elections in May, it suited the Congress(I) leadership to instal the 72-year-old Shanmugham as Chief Minister because of his perceived proximity to AIADMK general secretary Jayalalithaa and TMC president G.K. Moopanar (Frontline, June 8, 2001). Informed sources said that Shanmugham irritated Congress(I) president Sonia Gandhi by hobnobbing with Jayalalithaa even after the Congress(I) broke its alliance with the AIADMK in the local body elections in Tamil Nadu. With Moopanar dead, Jayalalithaa unseated as Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, and the Congress(I) leadership not backing him, no Congress(I) legislator was prepared to vacate his seat to enable Shanmugham to get elected to the House as the Constitution requires in the case of non-legislators who become Ministers.

Now the Congress(I) has not mentioned the TMC as a party supporting the Rangasamy government, in the list submitted to Lieutenant Governor Rajni Rai. It means that Theni C. Jayakumar, who was Cooperation Minister in the Shanmugham Ministry, will not find a place in the Cabinet. The Congress(I) jettisoned the TMC because it wanted the Puducherry Makkal Congress (PMC), with four legislators, to support it. The PMC was formed by a breakaway group of the TMC. Two independent members have also pledged support to the Rangasamy Ministry. The AIADMK's stand is to be watched because its legislator M.D.R. Ramachandharan is the Speaker.

The Pondicherry Assembly has 33 seats, of which three are filled by nominated members who do not vote. With the support of its 11 members, four of the PMC and two independents, there will be no immediate threat to the Congress(I) government. The AIADMK has three members and the TMC two. In the Opposition, seven legislators belong to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and one belongs to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Although he did not contest the elections, Shanmugham was sworn in Chief Minister on May 24. Sonia Gandhi chose him because Jayalalithaa would support only a government headed by him. Although the AIADMK had an alliance with the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) in Pondicherry, Jayalalithaa offered unconditional support to the Congress(I)-TMC coalition government.

The situation changed after Moopanar's death on August 30. Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president E.V.K.S. Ilangovan decided not to continue the party's alliance with the AIADMK in the Tamil Nadu local body elections. But the TMC continued in the AIADMK alliance. Time was running out for Shanmugham because he had to get elected to the Assembly before November 23. Meanwhile, PMC leader Kannan wanted to get even with Shanmugham because the latter had dismissed him from the Cabinet during his earlier stint as Chief Minister. n

T.S. Subramanian

An ISRO success

ON October 22, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) demonstrated its capability for the second time to launch multiple satellites from a single vehicle when its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, codenamed PSLV-C3, blasted off from Sriharikota and deployed three satellites in succession. The satellites were the Technology Experiment Satellite (TES) of ISRO, Belgium's PROBA (Project for On-board Autonomy) and Germany's BIRD (Bispectral and Infrared Remote Detector). While TES weighed 1,109 kg, PROBA and BIRD weighed 94 kg and 92 kg respectively.

With this extraordinarily successful launching, as ISRO Chairman Dr. K. Kasturirangan described it, India has powered its way into the highly competitive commercial market for launching foreign satellites. ISRO received a fee of about $ 8,50,000 each from Belgium and Germany. The last PSLV flight from SHAR on May 26, 1999, also successfully orbited three satellites, including an Indian Remote-Sensing Satellite called IRS-P4, KITSAT of South Korea and TUBSAT of Germany (Frontline, June 18, 1999). India had charged fees for the launch of KITSAT and TUBSAT.

This is the sixth successful flight of the PSLV in a row. Kasturirangan, asserted that the PSLV had repeatedly shown its reliability in performance and that there were not many versions of this class of vehicle in the world. D. Narayana Moorthi, Director, Launch Vehicles' Programme, ISRO Headquarters, Bangalore, called the PSLV a rugged and robust vehicle.

S. Ramakrishnan, Mission Director, PSLV-C3, said that although the flight was similar to the previous PSLV flight in that both launched three satellites, the uniqueness of the present mission lay in that it launched the three satellites in different orbits. TES was deployed in a circular orbit at a height of 570 km, BIRD also in a circular orbit of 563 km by 570 km, and PROBA in a highly elliptical orbit with a perigee of 568 km and an apogee of 638 km.

K. Ramachandran, Vehicle Director, predicted that more customers would flock in the years to come to use the PSLV.

The PSLV is a four-stage vehicle with six strap-on booster motors strung around the first stage. The vehicle is 44.5 metres tall and weighs 294 tonnes. It uses solid and liquid propellants.

The launch took place exactly as planned at 10.23 a.m. While the TES sped out of the fourth stage 16 minutes after lift-off, BIRD flew out 40 seconds later. The fourth stage of the vehicle burned for another full 10 minutes before PROBA was injected into its orbit. This flight lasted 26 minutes while the previous one lasted 19 minutes.

T.S. Subramanian