Stalin gifts his father, M Karunanidhi, Michael H Hart’s “The 100” on Wednesday.

CHENNAI: M K Stalin , who turned 65 on Wednesday, has had a hectic time ever since he took over as the working president of the DMK in January.

During turbulent times. he got some right, some wrong. The violence in the assembly during the trust vote was a misfire, but he made up for it by apologising to the speaker and publicly disapproving of the act of the MLAs. Since then, holding hunger strikes in Chennai and Trichy, issuing statements attacking V K Sasikala as well as O Panneerselvam , and holding back-to-back meetings with party functionaries, Stalin had been ticking all the right boxes. "He e went to New Delhi and met President Pranab Mukherjee . He has also sought an appointment with the Prime Minister," says a DMK functionary.

Political observers as well as a large section of DMK cadres give him a generous score, though not a distinction, in the way he dealt with the situation. In doing so, Stalin has also emerged out of the shadows of his father.

But some within the DMK make the inevitable comparison between the father and the son. Here, Stalin is at a disadvantage. "Thalapathy would eventually become the chief minister. But the DMK is not a party that is reliant on situations, but one that decides the situation. This is where Kalaignar stands tall," says a DMK functionary from southern Tamil Nadu. The contention of this section of the DMK rank and file is that Stalin could have done better. "A day after our state deputy secretary Subbulakshmi Jagadeesan said the DMK would support OPS in the assembly, Stalin chided her and said the party would neither support OPS nor Sasikala. If not for that statement, more AIADMK MLAs would have switched to the OPS camp, possibly defeating Edappadi Palaniswami in the trust vote," said the functionary. DMK workers also say the Congress' indecisiveness till the last moment on their support during the trust vote showed Stalin's lack of ability to control alliance partners.

"He could have made much of the jallikattu protests, the drought situation and the present Neduvasal protests,'' said another functionary.

Political analyst M Kasinathan says this disappointment among a section of the DMK could have stemmed from the fact that they couldn't form the government though the AIADMK was in a state of disarray. "Stalin has scored well on all fronts," he said. Stalin's strategy was in line with his view to come to power with people's mandate. "The violence apart, Stalin played his role well.

