Twin leaves wilt under DMK's rising sun in Tamil Nadu; Stalin set to be CM finally

Wishes poured in for Stalin from many people, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Muthuvel Karunanidhi Stalin on Sunday led the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) to a comfortable majority in the 234-member Assembly with the alliance leading or had already won in 157 seats, even as the AIADMK put up a spirited fight against all odds, including 10-year anti-incumbency.

68-year-old Stalin will be the new chief minister of Tamil Nadu – a post that he has been dreaming of for at least a decade now – and with the comfortable victory, he has not just emerged out of his father’s shadows but as a leader in his own right.

As wishes poured in for Stalin from including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Secretary Rajeev Ranjan, Director General of Police J K Tripathy, and Health Secretary Dr J Radhakrishnan called on the to-be-CM and congratulated him. DMK will be at the helm in Tamil Nadu after a decade.

If the leads persist the way they were at the time of going to press, the Tamil Nadu Assembly will have a strong Opposition – for the AIADMK, which was leading in 69 seats, and this is the party’s best performance in a losing election. In 2006, when late J Jayalalithaa lost the elections to DMK, AIADMK won in 61 seats, but her successor Edappadi K Palaniswami, dubbed as political underweight then, seems to have bettered the score.

Read: Delhi CM Kejriwal congratulates CM Mamata, Stalin on poll results

Palaniswami, who single-handedly shouldered the responsibility of the AIADMK campaign, won from his native constituency of Edappadi in Salem district by over 92,000 votes.

His son-of-the soil plank seemed to have worked for the AIADMK with the party winning several seats in its traditional stronghold of Kongu region.

BJP, which was routed in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, managed to win or register leads in four constituencies, though the state party chief L Murugan, actor Khushboo Sundar, and former Karnataka-cadre IPS officer K Annamalai had lost or were trailing behind DMK candidates. After a gap of two decades, BJP will have representation in the Assembly, as the party hopes to emerge as an alternative to both Dravidian parties.

The DMK on its own had won or was leading in 133 seats, according to the Election Commission of India (ECI), while Congress put up an impressive show by winning or leading in 16 of the 25 seats it contested. Many of the party’s star candidates, including Stalin’s son Udhayanidhi, won by huge margins. Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, a Dalit party that has emerged as one of the vociferous critics of the BJP, had won or was leading in four seats, while CPI (M) and CPI were leading in two seats each.

Though the magnitude of the victory was nowhere near his expectations – DMK was hoping to win 200 seats – Stalin thanked the people of Tamil Nadu for reposing faith in him, and attributed the victory as a reward to his “fifty years of hard work.”

Tamil nationalist party Naam Tamizhar Katchi did not win any seats but came third in many assembly segments.