Taking oath for a fourth term: A few facts about Jayalalithaa

Defying the incumbency factor,  AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa has managed to keep her status as Chief Minister intact, and will be taking oath in Tamil Nadu for a fourth term. With this assembly election win, she becomes the second CM of the state after MGR to retain power as an incumbent. We figured it was time we dug up some interesting facts about this steller politician:

She features in the Guinness book of records

In 1995, Jayalalithaa organised an opulent wedding reception for her foster son Sudhagaran. The mammoth ceremony which took place in a 50 acre ground in Chennai and was attended by over 1,50,000 guests earned her a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, for hosting the largest wedding reception. The IT department pegged the cost of this at almost 10 crore.

Accepted a token salary of Re 1 as Chief Minister

At her first stint as Chief Minister, she refused the cheque given to her as salary and instead accepted just Re 1 as her remuneration.

Career as actress

While the fact that she was a star in Tamil movies for many years is well known, not many know that she tops the list of actresses with silver jubilee films to their credit. She delivered as many as 80 silver jubilee hits in her career in Tamil, and 28 in Telugu. Her maiden Hindi film 'Izzat’ also did well at the box office.

MGR introduced her to politics

Marudhur Gopalan Ramachandran, or MGR as he is known popularly, did a susbtantial number of hit films with her. Following his succesful foray into politics, wherein he served as Chief Mnister of Tamil Nadu for three consecitive terms, he initiated Jayalalithaa into politics as well.

Lover of the arts

She speaks English, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi fluently, and is addicted to the written word. She was known to carry a book to sets even when she was an actress and has a large collection of some of her favourite authors- Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. She started learning bharatnatyam when she was just 3 years old, and over the years became proficient in Mohini Attam, Kathak and Manipuri.