On April 5, just hours before nomination filing came to a close, Vinoth Gandhi, son of Handloom and Textiles Minister R. Gandhi, withdrew from contesting the Ranipet constituency in the April 23 assembly election, paving the way for his father once again.
The ruling DMK had initially offered the ticket to Vinoth Gandhi, asking the veteran to take care of party work while making his son the candidate.
“Considering my father’s strong desire to contest again, I have decided to respectfully step aside and return the opportunity to him,” Vinoth Gandhi wrote in a social media post on April 5. The next day, in the afternoon, Gandhi spoke with the party high command and filed his nomination papers. The 80-year-old Gandhi is one of the senior-most ministers in Stalin’s cabinet and will seek a mandate for the fifth time from the Ranipet constituency.
Gandhi’s renomination and Vinoth stepping aside from the contest may be yet another development within the DMK for insiders. But the development of making a youngster opt out of the fray and a father’s decision to hold on to power has only proved detrimental to Stalin’s leadership.
After months of negotiations with alliance partners, Chief Minister and DMK President M. K. Stalin proved successful in seat-sharing and settling the alliance partners, making the alliance arithmetic advantageous for the allies as well as the DMK. But it seems he missed reading the minds of the senior leaders in the party.
Even before the election date could be announced, the DMK’s ‘senior problem’ actually began. Party insiders had many versions and news about the DMK’s senior-most veteran and its General Secretary, Durai Murugan, being asked to stay away from the election race. Born in 1938, this is the 13th time Durai Murugan will be seeking a mandate from his home turf—the Katpadi constituency. Party insiders said that Stalin wanted Durai Murugan to return to party work and make way for youngsters. It was said that a few celebrities and a poet tried convincing Durai Murugan, but he did not budge and finally, Stalin had to agree.
While Durai Murugan is the oldest in the fray, the DMK has also fielded others, such as K. N. Nehru and M. R. K. Panneerselvam, to represent the party’s old guard. Born in 1952, Nehru remains one of the chieftains of the DMK in the Tiruchirappalli region, while Panneerselvam, born in 1957, is yet another regional satrap who works from the Cuddalore-Villupuram region for the DMK. In the Dindigul region, 73-year-old I. Periyasamy, a DMK veteran, is fighting the election from his home turf, the Athoor constituency. Then there is 79-year-old K. K. S. S. R. Ramachandran, who was once part of M. G. R.’s cabinet and has also chosen to contest from his home turf this time.
In the past five years, Stalin has completely changed the image of the DMK, making it look like a party most favourable to women and the youth. The old guard that was calling shots in the party was either sidelined or made to toe Stalin's line. The DMK, which always went ahead with centralised leadership under M. Karunanidhi and now under M. K. Stalin, has a well-oiled party infrastructure with powerful regional heads who command enormous regional authority. This has often proved detrimental to the DMK's efforts to retain power for a successive term, as the regional satraps acted as chieftains. Critics often portrayed this as the DMK’s nature, and sometimes it was even called a “rowdy party”.
But Stalin, since he took over in 2018, has changed this image of the party and toned down its combative nature. He has proved to be soft, accessible, and inclusive. His nature and soft tone with outsiders and within the party helped the party build a strong coalition and continue with the same alliance for over three consecutive elections. He was able to convince the Congress, which demanded a share in power; he could pull in the late Vijayakanth’s DMDK, which had always opposed the DMK; and he could also distribute seats to those who defected from the AIADMK, including O. Panneerselvam.
But distributing power within the party seems to be a challenge for Stalin. He could not make the seniors step aside and create a generational shift in the party. In Ranipet, the father-son fight came out in the open, showing that Gandhi would not give up even for his son. Party insiders say that Gandhi was hesitant and fought until the last minute as he felt that power in the district might shift to his colleague Eeswarappan.
“Usually the ministerial berths are given to the seniors and every district will get a representation in the cabinet. So if Gandhi doesn’t contest now, the senior-most in that region will be Eeswarappan and not his son Vinoth Gandhi. This was the reason for the son giving up and for the father fighting,” a senior DMK leader told The Week. However, like Gandhi, there are many more seniors in the party who will not give up even for their sons, except for former minister K. Ponmudy. The list of senior leaders who sought tickets for themselves and for their sons this time in the DMK was long—E. V. Velu, minister from Tiruvannamalai, and Minister Raghupathy from the Pudukottai region.
Critics have often termed the DMK a party of “dynasts”, and of course, dynastic politics is not new to the DMK. But only a generational shift can ensure the party remains young.