Why Alagiri’s suspension from DMK is a non-event

So finally when DMK chief M Karunanidhi suspended MK Alagiri from the party, in favour of the younger son MK Stalin, it will most likely be a non-event in Tamil Nadu politics because the older son had played his brinkmanship way too often and far too long.

Had there been any possible collateral damage, the patriarch wouldn't have taken this decision. Alagiri, who seemed to have been perpetually quarrelling with his father for ignoring his succession-claims, is weak today and his fiefdom has been nearly taken over by the heir apparent Stalin.

It's been clear for a long while that Stalin, who has both considerable political and administrative experience under his father's tutelage, will be the future of the DMK.  Over the last few years, he has established his authority over the party across the state, which entailed negligible resistance from local satraps. The only hurdle to Stalin's empire was Madurai-based Alagiri, who controlled the southern districts. The party even had a special post for him - south zone organising secretary - from which he has been removed now.

Losing influence steadily. Firstpost

In the past, Alagiri had absolute control over at least five Lok Sabha constituencies in the south. With the district unit of the party disbanded and most of his supporters switching loyalties, he's a spent force now. In fact, there can't be a greater erosion in the party's following than in the 2011 assembly elections when it lost all the ten seats in his stronghold.

The effort of the party, or rather Stalin, now will be to consolidate his control in the southern district. For far too long, it had been outsourced to Alagiri and he mostly delivered well.

Alagiri's expulsion is not just political, but is also about settling succession-disputes within the Karunanidhi household. When Alagiri often said that he would accept only Karunanidhi's leadership, and nobody else's in the party, what he fought against was father's preference for the younger son. It always peeved him and his only instrument of protest was open defiance.

Therefore, every time the party took a strategic decision, which clearly involved Stalin, Alagiri would throw a fit for no reason and contradict his father and brother. The most embarrassing was his recent opinion against actor-politician Vijayakanth whose DMDK is being actively wooed by the DMK.

The DMK is facing one of its biggest electoral challenges this year. Till date, the party has not been able to assemble a decent alliance against the ruling AIADMK which appears to be very strong at the moment. It doesn't want to align with its UPA partner Congress and thought that it would compensate for the loss of vote share by roping in the DMDK.

But the DMDK is either ignoring its overtures or playing too pricey. It's also seriously talking to the BJP. If the DMK doesn't get the DMDK on its side, it will be in serious trouble and the only option will be to turn back to the Congress. In either case, the party will have to mobilise all its resources to mount a decent fight.

According to the Lokniti-IBN Tracker Poll, the DMK seems to be in serious trouble. If its voteshare of 23 per cent was neck-to-neck with the AIADMK's 25 per cent in 2009, by January 2014, it fell to a disastrous low of 18 per cent even as the share of AIDMDK rose to 27 per cent. The most surprising is the estimated rise of the vote share of the Congress from 15 in 2009 to 17 in 2014.

The Tracker poll also predicts that the DMDK's voteshare will fall to a mere three per cent from about 10 per cent in 2009. Although the accuracy of  these projected voteshares is limited by the nature of the alliances and the number of seats that each party contests, it does foretell a possible fall in the voteshare of the DMDK which the DMK is relying on. Going by the Tracker results, the Congress appears to be an unavoidable ally for the DMK, and with DMDK also on its side, it can take on the AIADMK with some confidence.

Whichever way the alliance finally turns out, the DMK cannot take chances and the last thing it wants is a nagging obstacle within its camp. So for the time being, the only way to silence Alagiri is to move him out.

However, one shouldn't be surprised if Alagiri makes a comeback sooner than later because, after all, he is family. What has unfolded so far is sibling rivalry that is expressing itself as a political fight. The sibling rivalry, under normal circumstances, doesn't end overnight because the sibling out of favour can always find sympathy from somebody else in the family.