Now, when the fourth generation of the Nehru family is in politics, the
nonagenarian from the Dravidian heartland is still hungry for success in
the electoral battlefield. His electoral contemporary since 1957, K.
Anbazhagan, DMK general secretary, has retired, paving the way for a
possible political baptism of a grandson.
The DMK warhorse’s electoral winning record is perhaps unmatched in the country.
M Karunanidhi had been successful in each of the 12 Assembly elections he
had contested. While he represented the rural constituencies of
Kulithalai (1957), Thanjavur (1962) and Thiruvarur (2011) for a term
each in the Assembly, he was twice elected from Saidapet (1967 &
1971), Anna Nagar (1977 & 1980) and Harbour (1989 & 1991) in
Chennai. Voters in Chepauk in the State capital elected him in 1996,
2001 and 2006.
M Karunanidhi 's winning streak would have been another notch higher had he contested in
1984, when his friend-turned-foe and AIADMK founder M.G. Ramachandran,
or MGR, famously won lying in a hospital bed in Brooklyn, U.S. Mr.
Karunanidhi chose to stay away as he had been elected to the then
Legislative Council after resigning as MLA in 1983 in protest against the attack on ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka
M Karunanidhi managed to enter the Assembly even while his
party lost on five occasions. Two such victories would stand out. In
1980, when MGR fielded H.V. Hande, a medical practitioner in Anna Nagar,
against Mr. Karunanidhi, the DMK president faced his toughest electoral
battle. He scraped through by a margin of 699 votes.
The next close call was in 1991 when he was the lone DMK candidate to
win, but by a thin margin of 890 votes in Harbour (another candidate won
in a by-election), as the AIADMK-Congress combine swept to power on the
sympathy wave generated by the assassination of the former Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi in Sriperumbudur. But he resigned his membership.
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