Karunanidhi furious after son Stalin gets back seat at Jaya swearing-in
AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa has not changed and neither will she in future, DMK chief Karunanidhi tweeted after his son and party treasurer M K Stalin was given a seat in the 16th row at the Tamil Nadu
DMK chief M Karunanidhi said on Monday that AIADMK’s Jayalalithaa ‘will never change’, after his son MK Stalin was seated in a row towards the end during her swearing-in ceremony as Tamil Nadu chief minister.
“When I see Jayalalithaa, I can sense that she has not reformed a bit, nor will she change in future. Only the Tamil Nadu people should change,” the DMK patriarch said in a tweet after Jayalalithaa took oath as the CM for the sixth time.
“At the very start, in the swearing-in ceremony, she has shown that she is still vengeful,” he added.
Attired in white shirt and dhoti, Stalin was spotted in the 16th row at the Madras University Centenary Auditorium, venue of the swearing-in function.
“Even though we got 89 seats and became the primary opposition, Stalin was made to sit among the crowd, while All India Samathuva Makkal Katchi leader R Sarathkumar, who lost in this election, was offered a front row seat,” Karunanidhi said in the extended version of the tweet.
In a move to bring down the political acrimony with its rival, Stalin chose to attend Jayalalithaa’s swearing-in as the chief minister. On Sunday, Karunanidhi said his party would attend the function as a constructive opposition in the 234-member assembly.
This is the second time Stalin attended Jayalalithaa’s swearing-in after participating in her oath-taking ceremony in 2001. He attended the ceremony as the mayor of Chennai along with few other Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leaders.
For decades, both party’s leaders kept away from each other’s oath-taking ceremonies.
Former DMK ministers EV Velu and Ponmudy besides their party MLAs Sekhar Babu, Vagai Chandrasekhar and Ku Ka Selvam were also seen in the function.
In a stellar mandate by the Tamil electorate, Jayalalithaa beat Karunanidhi and his DMK party to win 134 of the 234 assembly seats. DMK secured 89 seats, its allies Congress eight and IUML one.
(With PTI inputs)