Thiruvananthapuram: Amidst a pall of gloom following Jayalalithaa's death, it is a retired Malayali IAS officer who is reportedly running the Tamil Nadu government.
Sheela Balakrishnan, a fierce loyalist of Jaya who is currently serving as the adviser to the Tamil Nadu government, is responsible for taking key decisions and ensuring smooth governance in her capacity as the most powerful woman in the administration.
In fact, ever since Jayalalithaa’s hospitalization, Sheela, who originally hails from Sreekaryam near Thiruvananthapuram, has been acting as the interim head and running the administration efficiently, ensuring that there was no constitutional crisis.
Following the high-profile leader’s death, she played a key part in guiding administration in maintaining law and order in the State, said a top bureaucrat with the Tamil Nadu government. “Otherwise things might have gone awry,” he added.
Sheela is a 1976-batch IAS officer of Tamil Nadu cadre. Her husband also is one of the senior-most IAS officers in the State. She became a close confidant of Jayalalithaa in 2002 when the latter returned as chief minister following her acquittal in a disproportionate asset case.
However, she had to pay the price for her association with Jayalalithaa when the Karunanidhi-led DMK took over in 2006 as she was shunted to various insignificant posts during that period. But when Jaya once again became the chief minister in 2011, she was offered plum posts in the administration.
After clearing the Civil Services Examination, her first independent charge was as sub-collector in Thanjavur. Later, she went on to become director of social welfare under the M. G. Ramachandran ministry, and later commissioner of industries and commerce, a post she held for about nine years.
She was also the commissioner of fisheries between 1996 and 1998, before being appointed as secretary of the Social Welfare and Nutritious Meal Program Department in 2000 by the DMK government. According to her former colleagues, she had kept herself free of any kind of political affiliations during that period.
Sheela found herself in the bad books of DMK after she was appointed secretary to Jayalalithaa in 2002. Thoroughly impressed by her performance, Jayalalithaa later made her the undisputed leader of the bureaucracy.
Sheela managed to avoid the limelight despite holding several major posts, and her way of functioning very well fit in with Jayalalithaa’s style of governance. Instead of acting unilaterally, decisions were taken collectively after consultations with all concerned officials. She accepted proposals from heads of different departments to submit before the government for consideration and approval. However, those proposals would see the light of day only with Jaya’s consent, said a retired IAS officer.
It is not a secret in the bureaucratic circles that Sheela was the mastermind of many of the populist schemes introduced by Jayalalithaa over the past few years.
Sheela garnered a lot of attention in 2011 after Jayalalithaa returned to power. When the post of chief secretary fell vacant in 2012, her husband Balakrishnan was among the front-runners for the position. However, Jaya chose Sheela ahead of many senior IAS officers, including her husband, to lead the State’s bureaucracy.
Jayalalithaa offered Sheela the post of her adviser, a position which she continues to hold, when she retired from service in 2014. After Sheela’s retirement, Tamil Nadu had three IAS officers, but many powers remained with the adviser.
During Jayalalithaa’s prolonged stay in hospital, Sheela was one of the few persons who were allowed to visit her. There were reports that she had been working out of a room at the hospital to ensure routine functioning of the administration. In that extraordinary situation, the entire officialdom including the ministers were seen queuing up for her instructions.
It is widely speculated that Sheela would continue to call the shots in the administration despite the change in the political scenario in the state following the demise of Jayalalithaa.