“The [DMK] party is not Sankara Mutt,” former Chief Minister and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam president M. Karunanidhi had famously responded, on multiple occasions, to questions if his son M.K. Stalin would succeed him as party chief. He went on to explain that the party would decide on his successor and not a pontiff (or the elder in the house). (In the Sankara Mutt in Kancheepuram, succession is decided by the pontiff and not by popular vote.) Every time the argument of dynastic succession was brought up at press interactions or in private conversations, Karunanidhi would point out that the DMK was structured as a democratic political party that valued the opinion of the majority of its members.

Stalin had to climb the hierarchy the hard way. He became a member of the party general council in 1973 and won his first Assembly election in 1989, after losing an earlier one. Although he became the elected Mayor of Chennai in 1996, Stalin had to wait until 2006, his fourth term as an MLA, to be inducted into the Cabinet.

By then it was clear that Stalin would succeed Karunanidhi as the DMK president. This was, however, not formally stated until the DMK’s party constitution was amended in 2017 to elevate Stalin as “working president”. The next year, after Karunanidhi’s death, the DMK general council named him party president.

On Stalin’s elevation, R. Mani, an independent journalist and popular talking head on Tamil news television, said: “It was family politics or dynastic politics no doubt, but it was done gradually, over a period of more than 40 years. Stalin was jailed during the Emergency and brutally beaten up. I know this because my father’s close friend, who is now a neurosurgeon in the US, treated him. Over the years, Karunanidhi groomed him, and making him Mayor was part of the process.”

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He added: “Stalin was also an instinctively political person. So, in 2009, when Stalin was made Deputy Chief Minister, seniors like Anbazhagan did not protest. There was method in the elevation.” (K. Anbazhagan was former Finance Minister and former DMK general secretary.)

The new heir

In contrast, Udhayanidhi Stalin’s elevation as Deputy Chief Minister in September 2024 was quick, even by the standards of dynastic politics. He made his first political on-stage appearance in 2018. In just about six years, he has gone from the DMK president’s son to No.3 in the State protocol among Ministers. Actually, he is de facto No.2 in both party and government. The elevation is all the more surprising because in 2017 Stalin had stated that no one from his family would join politics. He repeated this on a Tamil television channel in 2018. Udhayanidhi, too, in a response tweet to this correspondent in May 2011 had claimed: “I don’t hav any intention of gettin into politics” [sic]. In June that year, he reiterated: “Kandippa politics vara maataen” (I certainly won’t enter politics). He repeated it a few interviews later. (Both tweets have since been deleted.)

In 2019, Udhayanidhi was suddenly named the party’s star campaigner for the Lok Sabha election. On July 4 that year, he was made secretary of the party’s youth wing. He immersed himself in party work, dividing the youth wing into seven zones and conducting meetings and classes. It helped that he had the blessings of his father and party president, and it was also made clear to the party’s district bosses that they had to support the youth wing’s efforts.

Ahead of the 2021 Assembly election, media reports speculated that he would contest a seat. A report in The Hindu in March 2021 said that when Udhayanidhi appeared before a DMK Assembly seat selection panel, his father appeared surprised. “‘Mr. Stalin, who was present there, wondered why he had come for the interview since he had already been advised not to contest in the election,’ a senior DMK source said…. Mr. Stalin put his foot down saying that he could not be given the ticket. Party leaders said Mr. Stalin was not ready to play into the hands of his critics, who have been accusing him of promoting his son in the party.”

A few days later, however, it was announced that Udhayanidhi would contest the Triplicane-Chepauk seat, one of the safest DMK seats. His opponent was a lightweight from the Pattali Makkal Katchi, and Udhayanidhi had a cakewalk into the Assembly. He campaigned extensively and did well to capture the imagination of the voters by holding up a brick and proclaiming that he had “stolen” it from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) site in Madurai. The “otha sengal” (single brick) back story is that the Centre announced an AIIMS in Madurai, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election. But there was zero progress even in 2021.

Electoral campaigns and victory

This provided great campaign material for Udhayanidhi and the DMK, with the former proclaiming he had “stolen” the only brick he found at the AIIMS site. While his speech did not have much variation (and hence did not make for good television), it resonated among the cadre, who cheered when he displayed the brick with “AIIMS” written on it.

When the DMK won the 2021 election, it was speculated that Udhayanidhi would be made a Minister. When his name did not make it to the list, senior party members and Ministers kept periodically claiming that he had “all the qualities for a Minister”. And just 18 months after becoming an MLA, he was appointed Minister.

Udhayanidhi was given charge of the Sports (and Youth Welfare) Ministry, in line with the image sought for him, that of a young leader wanting to reach out to the youth. He was given additional charge of Special Programme Implementation (SPI), poverty alleviation, rural indebtedness, and, later, planning and development.

SPI cuts across departments and Ministries and encompasses all welfare programmes implemented in the State. It works directly with the Tamil Nadu Skill Development Corporation, Skill Acquisition and Knowledge Awareness for Livelihood Promotion, Tamil Nadu Apex Skill Development Centre, and the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s Fellowship Programme.

At this time, Dr Darez Ahamed, a civil servant known for his efficiency and ability to work with politicians, who had made a significant contribution to the National Health Mission in the State, was put in charge of SPI. He was also put in charge of the Chess Olympiad, the first major programme Udhayanidhi undertook, and it was a spectacular success.

Similarly, when Udhayanidhi was elevated as Deputy Chief Minister, cementing his position in both party and government, Pradeep Yadav, another civil servant known for his efficiency, connections in New Delhi, and ability to work seamlessly with the political leadership, was made secretary to the Deputy Chief Minister. This was a new phenomenon. In the two earlier occasions when the State has had Deputy Chief Ministers—in the form of Stalin and O. Panneerselvam—neither had civil servants as personal secretaries.

Strong officers

These moves make it clear that Stalin is aware of the flaws of such a rapid promotion to Udhayanidhi and is trying to mitigate some of the damage by appointing strong officers to handle critical issues.

At the same time, the elevation of his son has increased murmurs about Stalin’s health. Sources said that Stalin told a DMK senior:“I won’t make him [my son] wait too long.” A reference perhaps to the four decades that Stalin had to wait before he could make it to the top chair.

Within the party, there is no publicly expressed dissent. For one, the seniors are too old and their children have skin in the game, a few of them already elected representatives at various levels. A party functionary said: “I look at it this way. The leader has endorsed X or Y. We accept the decision because he understands the party and the State better than us.”

Competition within DMK

There is just one competitor to Udhayanidhi in the DMK, his aunt and Stalin’s half-sister, Kanimozhi, once a challenger to Stalin’s position itself. Kanimozhi, a published poet and an economics student who worked as a journalist in India and Singapore, resisted popular demands to join the party until late 2006. In 2007, she was nominated to the Rajya Sabha.

Initially brought in to counter AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa, she won the Thoothukudi seat in 2019 and 2024 and went on to become the DMK’s deputy leader in the Lok Sabha and a valuable English-speaking party representative in New Delhi. In 2022, Stalin made her the DMK’s deputy general secretary.

The dearth of leadership material in the DMK after the mid-1990s has three reasons. It was partly by design because Karunanidhi did not want another challenger like Vaiko (who went on to launch the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam); it was partly because regional leaders were content nurturing their own pocket boroughs; and lastly, after Stalin took over, he almost doubled the number of district secretaries to 65, thereby reducing the power of this feared and respected party pillar.

Reaction to elevation

While the DMK’s allies have welcomed Udhayanidhi’s elevation, the BJP has questioned it. BJP State president K. Annamalai, now on study leave in the UK, tweeted on September 29: “The sun shines for the privileged few….”

Mani, the independent journalist, said the move was brazen and undignified. “This is throwing all political decency to the winds. This is a party which, since 2021, has been talking about social justice. The very concept of social justice is a contradiction to dynasty politics.”

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Mani argues that the post of Deputy Chief Minister or Deputy Prime Minister is created for a reason and there was no compelling reason in Tamil Nadu to do so. “In Stalin’s case, Kalaignar [Karunanidhi] was not well. In Panneerselvam’s case, it was a political consideration,” he said, adding that when inner party power structures get problematic, as in Karnataka, it too could warrant a Deputy Chief Minister. “In this case, the only reason is to keep power in the family.”

Today, the opposition is at its weakest in Tamil Nadu. If the AIADMK and the BJP lead separate coalitions in the 2026 election, it will be easy for the DMK to win a three-cornered election. The Tamil superstar Vijay has just entered politics, but his stand on most issues is not yet clear. There seems to be a marked reluctance in the way he is taking each step forward. As of now, he does not seem to be a major challenger.

With the party’s rank and file accepting Udhayanidhi’s elevation, it is now up to the people of Tamil Nadu to decide if this was the right time and if he was the right choice to succeed Stalin. They will get their chance to speak in 2026.