The Hindu : Challenges stare DMK council in the face

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 01, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu

Challenges stare DMK council in the face

By R.K. Radhakrishnan

CHENNAI May 31. The DMK general council meets here on June 2, amid daunting challenges posed by a host of recent events including the arrest of the party president, M. Karunanidhi's son, M.K. Azhagiri, and discontent among a section of workers over the conduct of inner-party elections.

While the need to address these issues might not be lost on the 1,186 members of the council, the urgency with which they take up the exercise will decide the direction in which the party is headed. Already, there is more than a whimper of protest over the consensus approach to decision-making at all levels, adopted after the murder of the former DMK Minister, T. Kiruttinan.

Many partymen concede that this is an `unusual situation' and calls for `unusual approaches' to ensure that the moment of crisis within the DMK is not exploited by `outside forces.' But there are more than a few who are not sure whether hurrying up party elections could be considered part of that strategy. The bold ones from among this group insist that the rushing through the election process brought discredit to the party and alienated supporters in some areas. In their view, while strong old-timers such as Veerapandi Arumugham and Ko.Si. Mani could not be displaced, elections in some districts such as Tiruvallur left a lot to be desired. The malaise was not confined to the districts; even elections to the lower level set-up in Chennai were not as free as these DMK men wanted the exercise to be.

Party leaders argued that discontent could have been caused by the fact that not everyone who contested could win, but this should be seen in the larger perspective. The DMK was among the very few mass parties which held elections as per its constitution. ``The process of the DMK voter enumeration began in December 2001. The next May, the election process began with the announcement of polls to 65,000 branch `kazhagams'. Considering the scale, it is possible that some mistakes occurred here and there. But these should not be magnified''.

Meanwhile, today, all district secretaries filed papers on behalf of Mr. Karunanidhi; the general secretary, K. Anbazhagan, and the treasurer, Arcot N.Veerasamy. Each nomination needs five members to propose and five to second. In all, 150 nominations were filed for each of the three seats. All the three will be declared elected unopposed on June 2.

Right now, it was time to push the internal issues to the background and look at the immediate future. There are far too many problems on hand — the momentum the Opposition gained in the run-up to the budget session and later has been lost and the National Democratic Alliance in the State lies in tatters with the DMK and the MDMK on one side, the BJP on the other and the PMK somewhere in between.

Besides, the AIADMK Government has been unsparing on the DMK and its leadership. The battle has literally reached Mr. Karunanidhi's doorstep, with the AIADMK-majority Chennai Corporation Council passing a resolution to reclaim an `encroached' portion of his Gopalapuram residence. Mr. Karunanidhi said he would deal with this issue legally. His new residence in CIT colony awaits clearance from the civic body.

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