New Delhi: Last week, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin inducted his son Udhayanidhi into the state cabinet — a move that drew criticism from opposition parties such as the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK).
Udhayanidhi, however, isn’t the first of the family to be inducted into the state cabinet — his father, DMK chief Stalin, was inducted into the state cabinet for the first time in 2006 by his father, the late M Karunanidhi.
Experts believe that this is a “relatively new trend” seen over the last few decades and indicates a “decaying” of political parties.
“In a democracy, it’s not a very good arrangement because, as the AIADMK said, Stalin’s son immediately becomes the number two in the cabinet whether designated or not. [A] party will ultimately suffer”, says Sudha Pai, a senior political analyst, author, columnist, and a former professor of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), told ThePrint.
Pai, however, qualified this by saying that such arrangements are not “always negative”.
“It could work differently in different places (for different people),” she told ThePrint.
In addition, this phenomenon of father-son duo running the government is almost exclusive to regional parties — whether it’s the induction of Shiv Sena’s Aditya Thackeray in Maharashtra or K.T. Rama Rao, son of Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao.
Here’s a look at how five other father-son duos in state cabinets have fared so far.
Also Read: This is why Modi revised his stand on dynasty politics. Beyond usual Gandhi family bashing
Stalin & Karunanidhi
In 2009, M. Karunanidhi, popularly known as Kalaigner for his contributions to Tamil literature, inducted Stalin as the deputy chief minister in his government — a move that cleared the DMK’s line of succession.
Even before his induction into the cabinet, however, Stalin had already proved himself to be an able administrator — during his first tenure as the mayor of Chennai (1996 to 2001), Stalin planned 10 flyovers to help ease the city’s traffic flow and successfully oversaw the completion of nine of these.
The 10th was completed when he became a minister.
While inducting Stalin as his deputy, Karunanidhi cited his health condition as the reason for his move. “In this condition, I am unable to give full attention to the administration. I have to read through more than 100 files in a week,” he said. “I discussed this with the finance minister and since his health is also not very good, we decided that I would retain one or two departments, the rest would be handed over to Mr. M.K. Stalin, who would function as the deputy chief minister.”
Despite being Karunanidhi’s son, Stalin was always a mass leader, Nagaraja Gali, a Hyderabad-based journalist and political analyst told ThePrint.
“Even though he was working under his father, he was the best at coming out of his father’s shadow. He succeeded in that way,” Gali said.
It was Stalin who was credited with reviving the DMK after the 2G Spectrum scam hit the party’s fortunes, Gali said.
Even before he took over as DMK chief in 2017, Stalin had been handling the affairs of the party. By then, Karunanidhi had been projecting him as his political heir for over a decade.
But Stalin’s rise to the helm of the party has been gradual. Since his arrest during the Emergency in 1975, he’s been called Thalapathy — the Tamil word for commander — and had been president of the DMK youth wing for over three decades since 1984.
After two stints as Chennai’s mayor (1996-2001 and 2001-02), he was elected the DMK’s deputy general secretary in 2003. In 2008, he was made the party’s treasurer.
First elected to the state assembly in 1989, he won his seventh term as a Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Kolathur constituency in the 2021 assembly elections.
Stalin did not get out of his father’s shadow until the time was right, senior political analyst Pai, quoted earlier, told ThePrint.
Aaditya Thackeray and Udhav Thackeray
Ater he won the 2019 assembly polls from Worli — the first Thackeray to contest an election — Aaditya, now 32, was appointed in father Uddhav Thackeray’s Maha Vikas Aghadi cabinet in December 2019.
As a minister, Thackeray was not restricted to his relatively low-profile departments of tourism, environment, and protocol.
He attended his chief minister father’s meetings with other ministers of his cabinet even in matters that did not concern him and even attended pandemic review meetings in districts under the jurisdiction of other ministers.
As a minister, he strived to shed light on his low–profile ministries and pushed his environment agenda, ranging from the scrapping now reinstated Aarey Metro shed, to launching the Electric Vehicle policy in 2021 and the Majhi Vasundhara Abhiyaan, a Maharashtra government’s 2022 initiative for sustainable use of energy and environmental development.
Aaditya Thackeray also drew his fair share of controversies — in 2021, he drew flak from then opposition Bharatiya Janata Party for building a penguin enclosure in Maharashtra. The initiative, a pet project of the minister, led the BJP to mockingly name him “baby penguin”.
The Thackeray scion began his political career as the youth wing president of the Shiv Sena in 2010.
“Aditya Thackeray was introduced in the presence of Bal Thackeray (in 2010). That meant he should follow the political legacy of Thackerays. It was assumed that the third generation of the family would remain politically (dominant),” Surendra Jondhale, a professor of politics at Mumbai University, told ThePrint.
According to Jondhale, Aaditya Thackeray’s decision to fight the 2019 assembly was significant.
“It never happened in the Thackeray family. It was a bold decision and (was) acceptable to Shiv Sainiks,” he said.
Since then, Aaditya has been striving to give Sena an image makeover by trying to project the party, previously known for its rowdy cadres, as having a more liberal and progressive outlook.
Jondhale told ThePrint that the 32-year-old leader has established his credentials and is already leading Uddhav’s faction of the Sena as his father struggles with health issues.
“He tried to transform the political character of Shiv Sena. More cosmopolitan. More democratic. More progressive,” Jondhale told ThePrint. “Modern Shiv Sena was visible in him. It is (now) more of Aditya Thackeray’s Shiv Sena.”
Although he didn’t have significant portfolios during his stint as a cabinet minister, it was a great “political learning experience” for Aaditya, said the political analyst.
“Becoming a minister was good political teaching for him. Unlike the criticism (against) Rahul Gandhi that he did not become the cabinet member when there was an opportunity, Aditya Thackeray grabbed (his chance),” he said.
Also Read: BJP says it doesn’t believe in dynastic politics, but its list of dynast leaders is ever-growing
KTR and KCR
A minister in his father KCR’s Cabinet holding portfolios ranging from information technology and industry and commerce to panchayat raj, K.T. Rama Rao, popularly known as KTR, played a vital role in KCR’s campaign during the 2018 assembly elections.
As working president of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, now renamed Bharat Rashtra Samithi, KTR had a role in deciding ticket distribution for the elections and addressing the dissidence in the party.
“KTR is not a mass leader. But he has proven his mettle,” political journalist Nagaraja Gali told ThePrint. “KTR first became (a) minister in his father’s cabinet in 2014. Since (then), his graph has (gone) upwards.”
After the 2018 assembly elections, KTR retained his old portfolios of Information Technology, Municipal Administration, and Urban Development.
“KTR has proved (himself) to some extent by winning various elections in his own way. As urban development and IT minister, he made strides. Beyond a doubt, KCR has made it clear that KTR is his successor. There is some road map (for this),” Gali said.
He believes that even if KCR, who, with the rechristening of his party, has now made his national ambitions clear, doesn’t leave Telangana, KTR’s clout will only grow.
“Sometime back, he (KTR) held a cabinet meeting without his father’s presence. But he does everything with his father’s approval.,” Gali told ThePrint.
Chandrababu Naidu and Nara Lokesh
Son of former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu, Nara Lokesh joined his father’s cabinet in 2017 as information technology and panchayat raj minister.
Reports at the time of his induction quoted Naidu as having told his party members: “Now is the correct time for Lokesh to step into government when the development of the capital and other massive infrastructure projects are taking shape”.
However, Gali believes that Lokesh failed to prove himself — especially since he lost his first election from Mangalgiri to YSR Congress’s Ramakrishna Reddy in 2019.
“Unlike KTR, Nara Lokesh’s case is different. Naidu has come to politics through sheer hard work. But Lokesh was born with a silver spoon,” Gali told ThePrint. “He has to go a long way to (go). Lokesh has to prove himself to take the baton from his father.”
Naidu, Gali said, was in “a hurry” to declare Lokesh as his heir apparent.
”He was made an MLC. Without any election, he was made the minister. Yet he failed to win the election in 2019,” Gali said.
In addition, unlike KTR, Lokesh is still in his father’s shadow and is still known as “Naidu’s son”, said Gali.
“Naidu and Lokesh are in political hibernation. In case Naidu loses elections, Lokesh will be nowhere,” Gali said but added that to see Lokesh’s political fate “we have to (wait till) the 2024 assembly elections”.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
Also Read: Modi dislikes dynasties. But he dislikes BJP losing elections even more