As chairman of the Tamilaga Nallatchi Iyakkam (Good governance movement of Tamil Nadu), Swamy toured Tamil Nadu with his team, including rebel leaders and former ministers S Thirunavukkarasar, V V Swaminathan and former assembly speaker P H Pandian, campaigning against the "corrupt regime" under Jayalalithaa during her first tenure (1991-96) as chief minister.
Once the movement gathered momentum, Swamy presented a memorandum to then Governor Channa Reddy, seeking permission to prosecute Jayalalithaa in the wealth case. In the memorandum, Swamy alleged that Jayalalithaa's income showed "geometric progression instead of arithmetic progression".On April 1, 1995, Governor Channa Reddy gave sanction to prosecute Jayalalithaa in two cases - TANSI case and Coal deal.
To achieve the goal of ousting Jayalalithaa, Swamy launched a three-pronged campaign. The first was to seek her disqualification from the legislative assembly through a memorandum presented to the government under Article 192 of the Constitution. In the memorandum he made out a case that Jayalalithaa committed violation under section 9A of the Representation of the People Act. The second campaign included mobilizing mass support through well-attended public meetings to explain to people the 'corruption and misrule'.
"It was one of the earliest anti-corruption movements." said Thirunavukkarasar, who headed a breakaway group called MGRAIADMK. By then, Swamy had acquired the image of an anti-corruption crusader and managed to poll more than a lakh votes from Madurai constituency in the 1996 LS polls, even though he lost.
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