Chennai, May 3: Dayanidhi Maran, the 37-year-old articulate economics graduate from Loyola College, is his father’s son.

True, he doesn’t wear the karai veshti — the plain white dhoti with the black and red border that is a key insignia for the Dravidian parties — opting instead for shirt and trousers.

But as he campaigns in an open Maruti gypsy with Murasoli Maran’s photograph prominently displayed on it, Dayanidhi assures voters: “I will continue the good work of my father.” The son of the late Union commerce and industry minister is contesting from the middle-class Central Madras seat that voted Murasoli Maran — who was also DMK chief M. Karunanidhi’s nephew — for three terms from 1996.

Dayanidhi has shed the old Dravidian movement’s pet hates and is not “anti-Brahmin, anti-Hindi and anti-North”. On the contrary, he is fluent in Hindi. Being a key player in the entertainment industry here has partly shaped his go-getter, cosmopolitan outlook.

When former finance minister Manmohan Singh came for his first meeting with Karunanidhi to firm up the Congress-DMK alliance in January, Dayanidhi was in the forefront, even impinging on his granduncle with pithy one-liners at press meets. “Like father, like son,” quipped a DMK source.

When M.K. Stalin — Karunanidhi’s son and heir apparent — went to Delhi to meet Sonia Gandhi, Dayanidhi was already seen as Maran Junior being groomed by the DMK to be its new face in New Delhi.

Former Union environment minister T.R. Baalu, who was Murasoli Maran’s “right hand” in Delhi, is sulking as Dayanidhi hogs the limelight. Though Baalu has been re-nominated from South Madras, sources say the party sees Dayanidhi playing a bigger role in Delhi after the elections.

Karunanidhi has even made a hand-written moving appeal to voters, vouchsafing that Dayanidhi “will work tirelessly and selflessly for the nation” like his father, who had done India proud at the Doha WTO meeting.

Typically in the DMK’s campaign, though Dayanidhi is introduced as Murasoli Maran’s son, it is Stalin’s pictures that loom larger in posters.

Four sets of nomination papers were filed for Dayanidhi. The first was proposed by granduncle Karunanidhi, the second by DMK general secretary K. Anbazhagan, the third by party treasurer Arcot . Veerasamy and the fourth by Stalin.

Stalin led the “Maran parivar” that included Mallika Maran, widow of Murasoli Maran, to the returning officer’s room when a smiling and excited Dayanidhi — cleanshaven and turned out in a blue shirt — came to hand over the papers.

“I am only the Thalamai Thondan (the chief among my party workers),” remarked Karunanidhi a few days ago, suggesting a Dayanidhi-Stalin axis in Delhi and Chennai — similar to the Maran-Karunanidhi axis — emerging within the party.

Pitted against the ADMK’s . Balaganga, who over two years ago had given Stalin a tough time in the Chennai mayoral poll, Dayanidhi is confident.

Balaganga is putting on a brave face and his leader, Jayalalithaa, has reserved the last three days of her campaign for Chennai, where water has become the key poll issue.

A nonchalant Dayanidhi accuses Amma of “lying” on the Veeranam water project — she has vowed to bring the water to the city by month-end — as the source lake itself is dry.

“My chances are good. People want a really good hand. They are unhappy with this government and want to show it in this election by voting the DMK-led alliance,” says Dayanidhi. The anti-dynasty campaign is irrelevant as “my father worked hard and able enough.”

At street corners, a DMK song blares out of loudspeakers: “Kalaignar thambi pillai enbathal vaareesu pattam sootuvatha? (Should you speak of the dynasty just because he happens to be the son of Kalaignar Karunanidhi’s nephew?)”