Poll drubbing loosens family ties, Marans may switch to Congress

DMK chief M Karunanidhi is a worried man. After the electoral drubbing at the hands of the AIADMK, the veteran leader might find it difficult to keep his flock together.

Talks are doing the rounds that a battered DMK is headed for a split. Karunanidhi’s grandnephews, Kalanidhi Maran and Dayanidhi, are likely to lead a splinter DMK group and merge with the Congress. Kalanidhi owns Sun TV and has a majority stake in Spice Jet. His younger brother, who is minister for textiles in the Manmohan Singh government, is close to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.

Congress leaders are sure that the party would split. “It is a just matter of time. It is bound to happen. And yes, some of them are likely to merge with the Congress,” a party office-bearer said.

Such a move is bound to affect the DMK-Congress alliance. Also, Sonia Gandhi’s congratulatory call to AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa on Saturday night took the party by surprise and now it seems Karunanidhi’s daughter and Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi might be sent to prison in connection with the 2G spectrum allocation scam. But party leaders have publicly insisted that all is well within the alliance.

A Tamil Nadu politician, who does not belong to the DMK or the AIADMK or the Congress, said the Congress would try to split the DMK if the party threatens to walk out of the UPA-II. “The splinter group that will join the Congress would be led by the Maran brothers,” he said. “Dayanidhi was the face of the DMK at the Centre from 2004 to 2007. He is close to the Congress chief; calls her ‘aunty’. The Marans don’t have any political interests; they are basically business-oriented. The Sun TV gave minimum coverage to Jayalalitha during the run-up to the polls. But now the coverage has increased.”

The Marans have been at loggerheads with Karunanidhi’s family. In 2007, Sun TV telecast an opinion survey that showed MK Stalin more popular than his elder brother Azhagiri. Even Dayanidhi was ahead in the popularity ratings. This angered Azhagiri’s followers who went on the rampage at the Sun TV offices in Madurai. Soon after the incident, Karunanidhi recalled Dayanidhi and proposed that A Raja be included in the Union cabinet. Prime minister Manmohan Singh made Raja the telecom minister.

The DMK chief, however, sorted things out ahead of the wedding of Azhagiri’s daughter in Madurai last year. There was a grand family reunion and the Maran brothers and Azhagiri were back to talking terms.    

But it is no secret that Stalin is Karunanidhi’s likely successor and Azhagiri is upset about it. The Maran brothers, a political expert said, could look for greener pastures as the DMK might lose its political clout in the leadership battle between Stalin and Azhagiri.

The Marans do not have a political base of their own but they own a media house and they are capable of raising funds. Which is why merging with the Congress is most plausible for a splinter group led by the Marans, the expert said.

TK Rangarajan, CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member from Tamil Nadu, said Karunanidhi would find it difficult to keep his family together. “He is in his late 80s. He does not have the same enthusiasm as he had earlier,” Rangarajan said. “After the poll debacle, even he admitted that traditional DMK voters did not vote for the party because they could not digest the fact that people from the family were involved in large-scale corruption.”

Though the party top brass brainstormed over the weekend about ways to tackle the Congress if the need arose, Dayanidhi Maran could not be reached. A party source said he was not in Chennai on Monday and he is expected to be back in Delhi only on Wednesday. One of his office assistants in Chennai, however, said Maran was with Karunanidhi all through Saturday and Sunday. The news could not be confirmed as DMK spokesperson TK Elangovan was not reachable on his phone.

But DMK leader Selvaganapathy rubbished the possibility of a split and said all was well within the DMK.

“We would discuss the reasons behind such a dismal performance at the general body meeting,” he said.

“Our party chief is still the leader of the party, and therefore the question of a succession battle and a consequent internal crisis does not arise. When we go down, we bounce back twice over. We stand united when there is a crisis. Only in a crisis we show our strength.”