Chennai: If DMK dynast Udhayanidhi Stalin has mastered one thing, it’s leveraging catchy visuals for election campaigns. In the 2021 Tamil Nadu assembly polls, the standout image was the film star-turned-politician holding a brick, symbolising the Narendra Modi government’s failure to build the promised Madurai AIIMS despite laying the foundation stone. This moment marked Udhayanidhi showing his mettle in politics.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the 46-year-old son of Chief Minister MK Stalin made waves again, this time brandishing placards showing a ‘29 paise’ coin—a sharp reminder of the DMK’s constant lament that the Centre returns only 29 paise for every rupee Tamil Nadu pays in taxes.
If being a star campaigner for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections marked Udhayanidhi’s political debut and the 2021 state polls his coming of age, then the 2024 campaign cements his position as the party’s second-in-command, even if it ruffles some party seniors.
Udhayanidhi, the MLA from Chepauk-Thiruvallikeni and a state minister, has been the undisputed face of the DMK’s 2024 campaign. Since the Lok Sabha poll dates were announced on 16 March, he has crisscrossed Tamil Nadu, speaking at 121 locations across 39 constituencies. In contrast, Chief Minister Stalin has addressed just around 20 campaign meetings.
This, DMK leaders claim, is just a glimpse of Udhayanidhi’s rising importance in the party since he entered active politics five years ago during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He has injected new energy into the DMK’s youth wing, once led by his father, stamping it with his own style. Additionally, he holds multiple cabinet portfolios, including Youth Welfare & Sports and Special Scheme Implementation.
“The party was in need of young blood to pull crowds and that’s when Udhayanidhi was inducted,” said Chennai-based political commentator A Ramasamy. “It has helped them a lot in the three elections that Stalin faced after becoming DMK president (in 2018).”
Ramasamy said that the ascent of Udhayanidhi, better known as a silver screen heartthrob and film producer until half a decade ago, has caused some “discontent” among senior leaders. “However, it has not been publicly voiced,” he added.
For now, Udhayanidhi’s punchy campaign style has been doing all the talking in Tamil Nadu, where voting for all constituencies took place in the first phase on April 19.
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Lok Sabha blitzkrieg
Udhayanidhi’s showstopper moment in the 2024 elections came on 23 March while addressing a rally in Ramanathapuram district.
As his campaign vehicle came to a halt, he pulled out a placard with “29 paise”, symbolising the state’s share of funds allocated by the Union government for every rupee paid in taxes.
Brandishing this placard, he took a direct hit at the Prime Minister, urging the crowd to call him the “29 paise Modi”. This immediately energised the crowd, which had been wilting in the summer heat, and they roared and repeated the chant after him.
“He attracts the crowd with his own casual, conversational style of campaigning, and it is a boost to the party,” said DMK spokesperson and former Rajya Sabha member TKS Elangovan.
Other senior ministers and party workers who spoke to ThePrint also acknowledged Udhayanidhi’s leadership in the DMK’s campaign, as well as for its allies across the state.
“Udhayanidhi toured almost all the constituencies and spent more time campaigning for the candidates than MK Stalin,” a senior DMK leader from the western region of Tamil Nadu said on condition of anonymity.
Even outside of election season, Udhayanidhi has been active in rejuvenating the party, reminiscent of his grandfather and DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi.
“With the Lok Sabha elections over in April, many senior ministers and bureaucrats went on annual trips. But Udhayanidhi shortened his trip and returned to his party work, reviewing tasks for his youth wing functionaries,” shared a youth wing member.
However, his efforts to infuse young blood into the party have not been well received by everyone.
“He hasn’t accommodated recommendations from senior ministers for appointing functionaries in the youth wing. This has hurt senior ministers and leaders in various districts,” the youth wing functionary added, noting that Udhayanidhi continues to operate in his own style despite some ministers complaining to the Chief Minister.
However, DMK spokesperson Elangovan denied any discontent over Udhayanidhi’s influence, arguing that the scion of Tamil Nadu’s first family earned his position through hard work within the party.
‘Ideology on sleeve’ & Sanatana Dharma row
Avoiding the usual white-on-white politician’s attire, Udhayanidhi is usually seen wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt embroidered with the youth wing’s emblem, which depicts a man carrying a DMK flag with the rising sun behind him.
“He’s not wearing the party’s trademark black-and-red border white veshtis, but he wears the party’s ideology on his sleeve,” said the senior DMK leader quoted earlier.
However, this professed affinity to the party’s ideology—centred on social justice, welfarism, and rationalism— has been a relatively recent development.
In a YouTube interview last year, Udhayanidhi admitted he had little knowledge about social justice and reservation back when he was not immersed in politics.
“There was a dialogue in the movie 7aum Arivu (Seventh Sense, 2011) against reservation. I didn’t see anything wrong with it then, but Suriya (the lead actor) pointed it out to me and asked me if it is OK to have it,” Udhayanidhi recounted in the interview.
However, his aides and senior leaders alike claim that Udhayanidhi has come a long way since then, with works by and about Periyar, CN Annadurai, Karunanidhi, and BR Ambedkar now mainstays on his reading list.
If a volume is slim, Udhayanidhi reads it in its entirety, but if it’s lengthy, his aides highlight important sections.
“Every day, we mark important portions of books for him to read,” said a close aide. “He traces the history of the Dravidian movement and reads as much as possible. Recently, he wanted to read Ninaivugal by Rama Arangannal. It was hard to find, but we managed to get a copy.”
Director-turned -TV anchor and Dravidian ideologue Karu Palaniappan frequently suggests reading materials to Udhayanidhi, the aide shared.
His favourite speakers among party seniors are said to be MP A Raja and former MP Tiruchi Siva. “He listens to their speeches on YouTube,” the aide said, adding that the minister also follows several Dravidian thinkers across party lines, including Suba Veerapandian, Kolathur Mani, and Arulmozhi.
Udhayanidhi’s immersion in Dravidian history and literature— which advocates for the dismantling of religious hierarchies—cemented his beliefs against Sanatana Dharma, or the ‘eternal law’ for Hindus, according to his aide.
Last year, Udhayanidhi sparked a major controversy across India by calling for Sanatana Dharma to be “eradicated”—a stance that, as ThePrint reported earlier, is not unusual for Dravidian leaders in Tamil Nadu and so did not seem to affect his popularity in the state.
Udhayanidhi’s youth wing
Though Udhayanidhi had been on the political sidelines since 2014, he stepped into the spotlight in 2019, first during the Lok Sabha campaign and then as the secretary of the DMK youth wing.
The post, held by MK Stalin for 34 years since 1982, was briefly given to MP Swaminathan in 2017 when Stalin was elevated to working president of the party. However, it went to Udhayanidhi weeks after the parliamentary polls, with the move widely seen as a reward for his effective campaigning against the AIADMK-BJP alliance.
The first assignment MK Stalin gave Udhayanidhi after the latter took charge as youth wing secretary was to add at least 10,000 members from each assembly constituency.
“It was the first big learning process on how seniors cooperate with him inside the party,” said another aide who has worked with Udhayanidhi from the start. “In the process, we managed to add as many as 2.1 lakh people to the party’s youth wing. More than 1 lakh were added by a minister in Chennai. This also means some ministers have not cooperated and worked for this assignment.”
With the success of the recruitment drive, Udhayanidhi went on to organise his first meeting with youth wing functionaries in late 2019.
“Many seniors had apprehensions about Udhayanidhi’s approach. They were used to working under MK Stalin and now had to adjust to working with his son,” the second aide said, adding that Udhayanidhi broke the ice by frequently conversing with them in the same casual manner he used in public speeches.
In the first two years as youth wing secretary, Udhayanidhi focused on consolidating his position within the youth wing, learning the ropes of DMK activities, and understanding the party workers, according to a youth wing functionary from one of the Cauvery Delta districts.
Then, after winning the assembly election in 2021 and having strengthened his grip on the youth wing, Udhayanidhi started identifying party workers who would pave the way for his future leadership. He is said to have appointed functionaries through a thorough analysis of their backgrounds, regardless of their financial or political status.
“Those who had really worked for the party were rewarded, irrespective of their background. Several successors of senior leaders were denied positions in the youth wing. They even complained to thalaivar (leader; MK Stalin), but chinnavar (junior) explained his decisions and got his consent,” claimed the youth wing functionary from the Delta region.
However, a first-time youth wing functionary from the western part of Tamil Nadu pointed to issues on the ground between party district secretaries and youth wing members.
“Though we are appointed separately, we still have to work with the party main units at the district, municipal, and panchayat levels. We constantly face hurdles on the ground, and it reflected even during the Lok Sabha election,” the functionary said.
According to him, some district secretaries don’t invite the youth wing functionaries for party events and protests and sometimes don’t even inform them. He added that Udhayanidhi had been apprised of this “non-cooperation” and had promised to resolve the matter.
Udhayanidhi, who appointed the district heads of the youth wing in August 2023, is now in the process of reviewing the party assignments that were given to them.
No 2 in government?
Just as he rose within party ranks, Udhayanidhi’s clout has swelled within the Stalin-led Tamil Nadu government, despite being a first-time MLA.
He won the 2021 assembly election from the Chepauk-Thiruvallikeni constituency—a seat Karunanidhi had held for three consecutive terms between 1996 and 2011—with a thumping margin of 69,355 votes out of 135,000 votes polled. Subsequently, in December 2022, he was sworn in as Minister of Youth Welfare & Sports Development as well as Special Scheme Implementation.
Udhayanidhi has particularly made his mark as sports minister, according to officials who have worked with him.
“Nobody would have ever thought Tamil Nadu would make a name for itself in sports. All these years, we have focused on state-level events like the CM Trophy events, but he wanted to make it national and international. That was the starting point, and now we are reaching all those places,” an official associated with the sports department told ThePrint.
Since 2022, Tamil Nadu has hosted a series of national and international events, including the Khelo India Youth Games, the 44th Chess Olympiad, the Squash World Cup 2023, and the Chennai Open Challenger tennis tournament. The state government has also announced the construction of six stadiums for para-athletes.
This year, in celebration of former Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi’s birth centenary, the government has started distributing sports kits to youth in rural areas in a Rs 86-crore scheme.
A senior IAS officer who has worked with Udhayanidhi said the minister understood the practical problems in supporting the state’s sportspersons.
“The hurdle is not the funds, but the process. Earlier, many sportspersons sought the government’s help, but with little to no funds, we let them down,” the official said. “After Udhayanidhi became minister, he increased the funding but later realised the process of getting the funds was too slow. That’s when he started the Champions Foundation with Chief Minister Stalin and former Indian cricket team captain MS Dhoni.”
The Tamil Nadu Champions Foundation is a state government initiative that involves partnering with citizens and corporations to revamp sports.
By many accounts, Udhayanidhi also gladly lends an ear to youngsters who are part of the 2022-2024 Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s Fellowship Programme (TNCMFP).
Under this paid fellowship, the fellows are assigned to various departments where they conduct research on key areas like education, healthcare, and water resources. Some are also assigned to the special programme implementation department under Udhayanidhi.
One fellow in this programme told ThePrint that Udhayanidhi goes out of the way to get work done even if it involves a department not directly under him. He claimed that when they conveyed the poor state of hostels run by the Adi-Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Department, Udhayanidhi quickly swung into action.
“The department doesn’t come under his purview directly, but as the Special Scheme Implementation Minister, he can inspect the places and direct authorities. Now, wherever he goes on an official trip, he makes it a point to inspect Ambedkar hostels, which are now getting a new lease of life,” the fellow said.
With Lok Sabha election results to be declared on 4 June, speculation is rife that Udhayanidhi may be appointed as deputy chief minister, similar to his elevation as youth wing secretary after the 2019 polls.
“He may be rewarded like he was in 2019. It’s up to the Chief Minister to elevate him,” said Elangovan. “If he is rewarded, everyone will support him.”
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
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