T MURUGANANDHAM : Less than a week after their father’s death, the long-simmering sibling rivalry between MK Alagiri and MK Stalin, sons of the late DMK president M Karunanidhi, has reared its head again. Alagiri, who has been kept away from party affairs for the past four years, triggered a controversy over the party leadership on Monday, stating that the true loyalists of Karunanidhi were with him even though he was not in the DMK for now. His remarks come just 24 hours ahead of the party’s executive committee meeting on Tuesday.
In the backdrop of reports that since the death of the patriarch hectic parleys have been going on in the family over ‘power sharing’ within the party, the elder son Alagiri has fired the first salvo, albeit with a sentimental touch, after paying homage at his father’s samadhi on the Marina, with his family.“I have conveyed my grouses to my father here. Right now you don’t know what are my grouses. But I say this... all true loyalists of Kalaignar (Karunanidhi) across Tamil Nadu are only with me and they support me. You will get clarity on this in the coming days.” Asked about Tuesday’s meeting, he said, “I don’t know anything about it because I am not with the DMK now.” Asked whether he would rejoin the DMK, he said, “What I have conveyed to Kalaignar was only about that.”
However, J Anbazhagan, confidante of party working president Stalin, told reporters there was no need to respond to Alagiri as he was not with the DMK. “No one in the party is in touch with Alagiri,” he said, adding that the DMK was firmly behind Stalin. Anbazhagan pointed out that the decision to expel Alagiri was taken by Karunanidhi himself. Stalin and other top party leaders, including Durai Murugan, are yet to react to Alagiri’s remarks.
Alagiri moved to Madurai in the 1970s and started having a say in the DMK’s local unit a decade later, although he held no party position at the time. From 1993, he has been actively involved in politics. He was suspended from the DMK in 2000 but rejoined the next year. In 2009, he was made the party’s south zone organising secretary but was suspended in January 2014. That April, he was expelled from the party.