Succession war: MK Alagiri’s not going to give up

The war of succession in the DMK continued on Thursday with M Karunanidhi’s elder son, MK Alagiri, indicating he won’t take kindly to his younger brother, MK Stalin, being made chief minister of Tamil Nadu.

“I spoke what I felt, according to my conscience, to a Tamil magazine. I accept Karunanidhi’s view that leaders should be elected democratically. I will only accept a democratically-elected leader. I have the right to say whatever I want,” Alagiri, the union minister for chemicals, said.

“If there is a democratic election, I will also contest. Why do we need to talk about all this when Karunanidhi is alive?” Alagiri, who returned to Chennai late on Wednesday night from an overseas trip, told reporters.

Alagiri’s remarks reignited an issue that seemed to have been settled in 2009, when Karunanidhi made MK Stalin the deputy chief minister. Alagiri himself was promoted to national politics when he joined the Union Cabinet.

In the interview, Alagiri had said nobody except the 86-year-old party chief (Karunanidhi) was capable of leading DMK. Asked about his son’s remarks, Karunanidhi had said on Wednesday, “I myself do not know from which year my post-retirement era starts.” The DMK patriarch, in a bid to prevent a battle between his sons, had told Tamil magazine Nakeeran on Wednesday that only the party could name a leader.

Stalin refused to be drawn into the controversy. The deputy chief minister, who rarely interacts with the press, blamed it for projecting a rift in the first political family of the state. “There is no fight within the party, the media seems to be creating it,” Stalin said in Coimbatore. He was in the city on Thursday to review preparations for the World Classical Tamil Conference from June 23-27 .

Karunanidhi too, said there was no fight between Stalin and Alagiri. “There are no differences between Alagiri and Stalin. They are mature enough to realise that the fallout of their differences, if any, would hurt me the most,” Karunanidhi said.

Alagiri has been strongly opposing Stalin’s growth in the party and the bonhomie between the two appears to be a sham.