Stalin-Alagri sibling rivalry comes a full circle

MADURAI

: Underlying antagonism and hostility had always marked their relationship. On January 3, as M K Alagiri, the elder son of late M Karunanidhi, took on his estranged brother and DMK president M K Stalin, the battle lines were drawn yet again.

The

sibling rivalry

between Alagiri and Stalin, Karunanidhi’s sons from his second wife Dayalu Ammal, erupted into the open in 2001. The feeling within the DMK was that papa Karunanidhi had always favoured younger son Stalin when it came to politics, grooming him to take over the party reins from him.

In the late 1980s, as fissures deepened between his sons, Karunanidhi sent Alagiri to Madurai, demarcating his sons’ bastions. Alagiri was given charge of ‘Murasoli’, then a powerful party organ that had grown in stature and clout among partymen. When Stalin, as the then DMK youth wing secretary, conducted a state conference in Virudhunagar in the year 2001, Alagiri was accused of asking cadre to stay away from the programme. He was suspended from the DMK. Party general secretary K Anbazhagan issued a diktat asking partymen not to have any truck with Alagiri. The seeds had been sown for deepening rift between the brothers.

In 2001, after his suspension, Alagiri distanced himself from elections to the Madurai Corporation Council. But seven of his supporters contested as independents and won. The AIADMK and its allies won 37 seats in the 72-member council and the DMK 35. Alagiri’s supporter D Chinnasamy was elected as deputy mayor. After Chinnasamy died in 2005, Alagiri’s supporter Ghouse Basha was elected as deputy mayor, unopposed. Alagiri thus established his supremacy in the Madurai region.

Though Alagiri did not hold an official post in the DMK, he continued to influence the party cadre that led to feuds and factionalism. Senior leaders like T Kiruttinnan and former assembly speaker P T R Palanivelrajan opposed it stoutly. In May 2003, Kiruttinan was hacked to death and Alagiri was arraigned as the prime suspect. On May 9, 2007, Alagiri’s supporters set fire to the office of the Dinakaran newspaper, owned by Kalanithi Maran after it projected Stalin as the successor to Karunanidhi in a survey conducted by it. Three workers of the newspaper were killed in the incident. The DMK distanced itself from Alagiri.

in 2009, Alagiri was asked to steer the party’s election machinery for the Thirumangalam byelection. It was the same year that the 2G scam broke out with the party leadership fighting to stave off corruption charges and struggling to save its image. Alagiri was made the south zone organising secretary of the DMK, his first official posting in the party. It was around that time that Stalin was made the DMK treasurer, for which Alagiri now claims he was instrumental. He says he had persuaded his father to appoint Stalin to the post.

After the DMK’s victory in the Thirumangalam byelection, DMK chief Karunanidhi gave his elder son Alagiri the ticket to contest the Lok Sabha elections from Madurai. Alagiri became the first DMK MP in Madurai and subsequently the Union minister for chemicals and fertilizers. In exchange, his brother was made the deputy chief minister of Tamil Nadu from 2009 to 2011.

Alagiri was expelled from the DMK on January 24, 2014 six days before his birthday, for his statements that the DMK would lose in the Lok Sabha election. His father, however, said he was expelling him for saying that Stalin would die within a few months. Then Karunanidhi fell ill, and Alagiri’s attempts to get back into the party appeared doomed.

After the demise of their father on August 7, 2018, Stalin assumed charge as president of the party. The conflict between the two brothers seemed to only deepen, ensuring that Alagiri remained expelled from the DMK.


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