Dynastic politics will make an appearance in Tamil Nadu Saturday when DMK chief M. Karunanidhi's son M.K. Stalin takes oath with 31 others in his father's council of ministers.Stalin's name figured in the list of prospective ministers the DMK released after Karunanidhi was invited to form a government.
Party sources said that Stalin would get the local bodies portfolio, while his father would keep the home and minority affairs portfolios.
K. Anbazhagial, who at 83 is the senior most DMK leader - he's slightly older than Karunanidhi - is to be the new finance minister, party sources said.
The list of prospective ministers includes two Muslims and three women.
Stalin has been at the centre of a controversy relating to dynastic politics in the DMK. In 1992, party leader V. Gopalaswamy, better known as Vaiko, had walked out and formed the MDMK to protest moves to "enthrone" Stalin as his father's heir.
During the campaign for the just-concluded assembly polls, Stalin had discussed as "absurd" talk of his being Karunanidhi's successor.
Stalin, who for long headed the DMK's youth wing, is a former mayor of Chennai.
Earlier Friday, Karunanidhi met Governor Surjit Singh Barnala and staked claim to form Tamil Nadu's first minority government, a day after leading his alliance to a grand victory in the assembly elections.
Karunanidhi, who will be chief minister for a fifth time in his long and eventful career, called on Barnala, with whom he enjoys excellent rapport, soon after the Congress party extended unconditional support to him.
M. Veerappa Moily, the Congress Working Committee member in charge of Tamil Nadu, called on the DMK president in the morning and told him that "the Congress will extend unconditional support" to the new DMK government.
Moily told the media after his meeting that the Congress leadership had decided to extend support to Karunanidhi in forming a ministry.
The Congress, in turn, wanted similar DMK support to form a minority government in Pondicherry. In that union territory, nestled within Tamil Nadu, the Congress has won 10 seats while its allies including DMK won another 10.
Karunanidhi's other allies - PMK leader S. Ramadoss, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and Communist Party of India (CPI) - also announced their support to a DMK government led by Karunanidhi.
The DMK failed to get a majority on its own in the May 8 elections to the 234-member assembly. It won 96 seats and needed the support of allies to target the required quorum of 118 seats.
The AIADMK government of Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalitha resigned Thursday after its alliance lost the electoral battle for power.
But the finish was a close one, with only 4.75 percent of the votes separating the two fronts.
The PMK won 18 seats, the CPI-M nine, the CPI six and the Congress a respectable 34, fuelling speculation that it would demand a share in the government.
Despite losing, the AIADMK will have 61 members in the Tamil Nadu legislature along with six of Vaiko's MDMK and two of the Dalit Panthers. (IANS)
