Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin appointed his son Udhayanidhi Stalin as his deputy. 46-year-old Udhayanidhi Stalin is now the Deputy Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. With this step, the formal process of handing over the succession of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) to the third generation was completed.
Senior journalist KV Prasad, in an article written for the news website NDTV, has said that the election symbol of DMK is 'the rising sun behind two mountains' and Udhayanidhi Stalin is the symbol of the same 'rising sun' that has risen in the party. MK had included son Udhayanidhi in his council of ministers in the year 2022. Then it became clear that like many regional parties of the country and the Congress Party as a national party, the Congress Party too has the idea of top leadership outside the family. DMK is useless. MK Karunanidhi had made his son MK Stalin his deputy from 2009 to 2011 and then handed over the command. MK has followed his father's footsteps and made his son his deputy. The future is absolutely clear.
However, Karunanidhi and MK Stalin took different paths from each other to enter politics. MK continued to learn the ropes of politics for two decades and then formed the DMK youth wing and started gaining practical knowledge of politics. He then held the post of Mayor of Chennai and later joined his father's cabinet. Udhayanidhi, on the other hand, entered politics after working as a producer and actor in the Tamil film industry. Udhayanidhi has ample time to offload his father's burden and inject some youthful energy into the campaign ahead of the 2026 assembly elections in the state.
Senior journalist KV Prasad writes in his article, 'Except for the years between 2011 and 2021, Tamil Nadu has seen revolving door politics on a large scale. That is, the governments here have been changing between DMK and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). AIADMK is trying to re-establish itself after the void created by the demise of its veteran leader J Jayalalitha.
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Except Kerala, other states of South India also have similar 'emerging political heirs'. Former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda's two sons, HD Kumaraswamy and HD Revanna, from the Gowda family of Karnataka, are active politicians. Kumaraswamy is now a Union Minister in the cabinet of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He has been Chief Minister twice.
Both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have seen the sons of Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and former Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao playing active roles in state politics. While Naidu's son Nara Lokesh is back in his father's council of ministers, Rao's son KT Rama Rao was the IT minister in the previous Telangana government and is now busy activating his party Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) while in the opposition. , However, both Rama Rao and Lokesh are not described as their father's number two.
But the case of North India is a little different. Fifteen years ago, Prakash Singh Badal had inducted his son Sukhbir Singh as deputy chief minister in his Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal) (SAD-B) government in Punjab. The move also met with brief success when the Sukhbir Singh-led campaign brought the party to power in the 2012 assembly elections. The victory was unique as it had been decades since Punjab had supported the same party in two consecutive elections. But the success was not sustainable and things gradually started deteriorating. Unable to maintain its hold, the Akali Dal under the leadership of Sukhbir Badal today has to contend with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), a relatively new force in the state.
In Haryana, the two sons of former Chief Minister Bhajan Lal could neither maintain their father's political legacy nor manage the fortunes of their Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC). One of his sons, Kuldeep Bishnoi, is today in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), while the other son, Chandra Mohan, is in the Congress, with which the HJC merged in 2016. Similarly, the great Chief Minister's son Bansi Lal was in different parties and failed to repeat his father's success.
The story of the family of Devi Lal, the third 'Lal' of Haryana politics, is different. When he joined VP Singh's cabinet at the Center in 1989, Devi Lal appointed his son Om Prakash Chautala as his successor. Many still remember how Devi Lal hit back at anyone who questioned this move, 'So who should it be, your son?' Chautala became the Chief Minister of Haryana four times, although could complete his tenure only once.
Transferring power across generations is never easy. Mulayam Singh Yadav also realized this when his son Akhilesh Yadav became the Chief Minister, which led to bitter discord in the Yadav clan. The spark of that rebellion is still burning today. At the same time, the Yadav family of Bihar is also not able to do anything special at the moment. Former Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav is still the head of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).
Lalu's younger son Tejashwi Yadav has informally maintained the party's legacy. However, Lalu's elder son Tej Pratap Yadav also became a minister twice in the cabinet of Nitish Kumar of Janata Dal United (JDU). Shibu Soren has grown old in Bihar's neighboring state Jharkhand. Hemant Soren, son of Shibu Soren, popularly known as Dishom Guru (Guru of the country), is currently the Chief Minister of the state. Hemant's elder brother Durga Soren is no more and his wife Sita Soren has now joined BJP.
Keep in mind that from North to South, all these regional parties have built their fortunes on the basis of caste, region and other types of identity politics. Some people fanned poisonous politics against other castes and classes in support of a particular caste or class, while some made people fight among themselves in the name of region and language and continued to earn their political bread. These are political swindlers who have made their fortune by continuously deceiving their supporters. All these parties started their politics decades ago by giving air to the same issues, even today they are capitalizing on the same issues, even though they have been in power many times.
