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So, after Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi and Raja, will we see Dayanidhi Maran, who has just quit the Union Cabinet owing to his alleged involvement in the 2G scam, cooling his heels in jail, bearing the brunt of the DMK’s loss in the Tamil Nadu or TN assembly polls?

Well, apparently it seems the Congress is doing all it can to root out corruption.

First, it got rid of its junior minister for external affairs Shashi Tharoor over an alleged sweat equity granted to his wife Sunanda Pushkar by the Kochi team of the Indian Premier League.

Then, we saw Suresh Kalmadi being sacked as Commonwealth Games committee chairman over alleged wasteful expenditure of Rs 70,000 crore during the Games.

Then, Congress ally DMK’s Kanimozhi and Raja fell like nine pins, followed by Maran recently, who had to quit the Cabinet as textiles minister. Only Delhi chief minister Shiela Dikshit could untangle herself from the Commonwealth Games mess.

The Congress trying to purge its image ahead of the general elections in 2014 is only one side of the picture.

Well, with Jayalalithaa coming to power in Tamil Nadu, the Congress doesn’t find the DMK indispensible any more. The party knows that even if it displeases the DMK, it wouldn’t stand to lose in the medium term.

It also knows that the 2G taint could prove too costly and cost the DMK even the general elections in 2014 and, moreover, it is aware that Karunanidhi may not become chief minister ever again (considering he is 90 years old and his health is deteriorating).

The series of events could have had a different twist. But how?

Suppose the Tamil Nadu elections had thrown up some surprises and the DMK won the state polls with landslide victory and Karunanidhi became the chief minister again.

Then, it could have been a different story altogether. There wouldn’t be any prize for guessing that our parties go out of their way to ensure they have the requisite numbers in Parliament or state assembly so that they can form the government.

Cutting across party lines, we all know that there is rampant horse-trading where parties or politicians are given astronomical sums of money to team up with the main party. So, there could have been efforts from the main UPA ally to keep another ally, the DMK, in good humour (only if the party had clinched Tamil Nadu in the polls).

Now, had Karunanidhi become the Tamil Nadu CM, we probably would have seen a different scenario altogether: Kanimozhi (as usual) vehemently denying to the press allegations that she was in any way involved in the 2G scam, Raja going scot free with a plum posting at the DMK headquarters in Chennai (to keep him out of public spotlight) and Dayanidhi Maran carrying on his business as usual (as textiles minister).

So, can we infer that Raja, Kanimozhi and Maran are bearing the brunt of the DMK’s loss in the Tamil Nadu assembly polls, because now, even if the DMK is disgruntled, the Congress has an alternative of tying up with Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK and form the government after the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections?