Scotching speculations over the elevation of his son and cabinet colleague, Udhayanidhi Stalin, as the deputy chief minister, DMK President and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin said on Monday that the time is not ripe for the move.
With Stalin slated to commence his tour of the United States later this month (August 22) to scout for investments for the state, speculation is rife about Udhayanidhi’s anointment as the number two in the ministry with deputy chief ministership along with a cabinet reshuffle. Senior DMK ministers too had gone public saying Udhayanidhi, the GenNext face of the party, deserved the elevation ahead of the 2026 Assembly elections.
While the demand to formalise Udhayanidhi’s position as the second in command in the party and the government has been surfacing time and again, it was left to the discretion of Stalin to take a call. In the past, Stalin dismissed the demand as an issue not on the cards. Now, it appears the wait for the coronation of the crown prince has got extended. It was to happen together with a much-awaited cabinet expansion to facilitate the return of PTR (Palanivel Thiagarajan) to the finance portfolio and induction of some new faces. Thiagarajan was earlier moved to Information Technology.
“The demand (for elevating Udhayanidhi, 47, as deputy CM) has gained more support. But, it is not yet ripe,” was Stalin’s response to reporters earlier in the day after reviewing the developmental works at his Kolathur Assembly constituency. This is the first time that the chief minister admitted in public that the push for making his son the number two is coming from the party.
In January this year after addressing the DMK’s Youth Wing Conference at Salem, a massive show of son Udhayanidhi, the DMK chief dismissed it as a rumour. As secretary of the party’s youth wing, he organised its second conference with a team of senior ministers ensuring it was a grand success. “It is not on the cards,” Stalin had said then.
Currently, holding the portfolios of Youth Welfare, Sports Development and Special Programmes Implementation, he is accorded prominence in government events with senior ministers playing ball. The late DMK patriarch and former chief minister, M Karunanidhi, had entrusted with him the party organ ‘Murasoli’ and tutored him on Tamil. Running a successful film production firm, Red Giants, he took to acting before taking the plunge into electoral politics and won from the Chepauk-Thiruvallikeni constituency in the city in 2021. His elevation as a minister in the Stalin cabinet came a year later.
Now, the question is whether Stalin still could postpone his son’s eventual coronation disregarding the charge of dynastic succession. For, his father and the late DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, had inducted him in the cabinet only when Stalin was in his late 50s, and then as deputy CM in 2009.
Moreover, the patriarch had not let him take the mantle of the party till his death in 2018. Apart from Stalin, Udhayanidhi remains a star campaigner of the party. There is none to challenge his position in the DMK, which according to analysts is firmly in the grip of the family.