Karunanidhi

Chennai, April 20: Come June and the DMK is likely to elect M. Karunanidhi its chief for the 10th time in a row — a record for any Indian politician.

Going by the party’s calendar, the decision should come on the eve of the patriarch’s 85th birthday on June 3.

This means Karunanidhi’s younger son M.K. Stalin, tipped to succeed him, will have to wait in the wings a bit longer.

The DMK’s first youth conference in Tirunelveli last December was to set the stage for Stalin’s elevation. Veteran CPM leader Jyoti Basu sent a message from Calcutta for the conference specifically addressed to Stalin.

Karunanidhi, too, hinted at an imminent change of guard. “Don’t worry. Your expectations (about the political elevation of Stalin) will become reality and you can wait for an announcement soon on when it will happen,” he said.

But party sources now say the patriarch will be around for some more time. “We have all accepted Stalin as our next leader. But nobody in the party wants a change in the top leadership slots now,” a source said.

The party, it seems, is yet to take the cue from the CPM, which allowed veterans Basu and Harkishen Singh Surjeet to retire recently.

The DMK’s organisational polls, carried out every five years, was to commence soon after the Tirunelveli meet. Stalin’s promotion was expected to coincide with the last phase of the organisational polls in May-June.

But various political issues seem to have forced a change of plan. The price rise crisis, hitches in the UPA-Left relations and the Congress’s wish to see Karunanidhi as the DMK’s leader for the 2009 Lok Sabha polls are being cited as the reasons.

Left to himself, Karunanidhi would like to call it a day. At a meeting of pensioners in Chennai recently, the Tamil Nadu chief minister said: “I envy your well-deserved retirement. I, too, wish I could retire and take rest, but heavy party responsibilities are there.”

Karunanidhi, who took over as the DMK chief in 1969 after the death of C.N. Annadurai, today needs assistance when he walks.

But quitting politics altogether may not be what the Kalaignar wants. In his autobiography Nenjukku Needhi (Solace to the Mind), he mentioned the words of a poet who asked: “Can there ever be a DMK without MK (M. Karunanidhi)?”