DMK office deserted, party ready to assist after Jayalalithaa’s demise

Bitter rival DMK too mourns arch rival Jayalalithaa as politics takes a back seat for the moment. DMK chief Kaunanidhi’s heir Stalin describes her death as an “irreparable loss” and the party hints that ties with the AIADMK need not be acrimonious from now on.

The DMK’s headquarter in Chennai was completely deserted on Tuesday, save for a small contingent of policeman standing guard at its locked gates, as Tamil Nadu comes to grip with the loss of one of its most powerful leaders, Jayalalithaa.

Former Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa body in a tricolour-wrapped coffin for public viewing in Chennai. (AP)

Despite being a bitter rival of DMK patriarch Muthuvel Karunanidhi, whose ambitions to become chief minister were thwarted by the 68-year-old’s stunning victory in the 2016 assembly elections, the DMK has pledged its support and offered its commiserations following Jayalalithaa’s death.

Karunanidhi who has been in hospital for a week for an allergy, issued a statement on Tuesday offering his condolences.

His son and heir, MK Stalin, was more strident in his praise of the late CM, saying that her demise was “an irreparable loss to the people of Tamil Nadu.”

Read | Who after Jayalalithaa? Can Paneerselvam carry AIADMK into the future

The question now remains what the DMK will do following the immediate aftermath of Jayalalithaa’s death, and whether it will resume its traditional combative stance towards the AIADMK, whose political dominance in the state seems shaky with her passing.

“We want to bury our acrimonious past, and move forward to a different equation now,” says C Saravanan, senior party leader and DMK spokesman. “O Pannerselvam as a leader cannot be compared to Jayalalithaa, but politics can wait while the state mourns her.”