In a statement here, Jayalalitha alleged that instead of taking action against the minister, Karunanidhi was trying to make the Dalit functionary withdraw the criminal case he had filed against the minister and trying for a reconciliation between the two.

Jayalalitha said a resident of Nagercoil, Manikandan who is the town secretary of the farmers wing of the DMK, has lodged a complaint with the police that the minister, his personal secretary Ramesh Markandan and advocate Ramesh stopped their car at Valliyur on their way back from the DMK conference at Tirunelveli, on sighting Manikandan at a tea shop. Then the minister abused him by calling him by his caste name and the three assaulted him,she added.

Meanwhile, the Madras High Court today reserved orders on a batch of writ petitions filed by Jayalalitha and others challenging the Constitutional validity in appointment of special courts to hear cases registered against them under the Prevention of Corruption Act by the Tamil Nadu Government.

A Division Bench, comprising Chief Justice M S Liberhan and Justice E Padmanabhan, reserved their order after hearing lengthy arguments from counsel for the petitioners and the state and central governments, which commenced on July 14 last and was spread over 27 working days.

During the course of arguments Rajeev Dhawan, K T S Tulsi, B Sriramulu and N Jyoti described the courts as `regime' courts and said they were anti-constitutional while the Additional Solicitor General G Maslamani, V R Reddy and C S Vaidyanathan justified the setting up of the courts.

Three special courts had been set up to hear cases of alleged corruption between 1991 and 1996 while Jayalalitha was chief minister of Tamil Nadu.In all 46 cases had been filed so far against the AIADMK supremo, her close friend Sasikala Natrajan, her disowned son V N Sudhakaran, minister's of her erstwhile government and some IAS officers. The Bench directed counsel for the parties to make written submissions of their arguments within the next two days.