Actor Udayanidhi Stalin Arrested

Udayanidhi Stalin is MK Stalin’s son and grandson of late Karunanidhi. Besides DMK’s youth leader, Udayanidhi is also famous film actor and producer. He was arrested yesterday on the first day of their party’s 75-day campaign for the Tamil Naidu Assembly polls, scheduled in 2021. Condemning the arrest, the DMK functionaries staged a protest. The campaign was launched to wrest power from the AIADMK, which has been in the ruling for the last 9 years.

Udayanidhi was arrested at Thirukuvalai, the birth place of late party chief M. Karunanidhi, Udayanidhi’s grandfather. Before launching the campaign, Udayanidhi paid homage to Karunanidhi at his Samadhi in Chennai at Marina. However, after an hour, Udayanidhi and 500 others were taken into custody and kept in detention in a private wedding hall for violating prohibitory orders. Before his arrest, Udayanidhi also launched the party’s larger campaign planned for 100 days and it will be executed by the DMK youth wing.

The DMK has plans to hold 1,500 meetings and 10 lakh discussions during their 15,000-km travel in all 234 Assembly constituencies. During the campaign “Vidiyalai Nokki Stalinin Kural (Stalin’s voice towards dawn), the party leaders will know about their problems and their aspirations too.

The DMK was routed in 2011 Assembly polls by Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK. In 2016 too, the DMK tasted defeat but in last year’s Lok Sabha elections, the DMK bounced back with a strong performance. The DMK-Congress alliance won 38 out of the 39 Parliamentary seats in Tamil Nadu, besides the lone Puducherry seat, leaving the AIADMK with just one seat. The 2018 election was the first major election in Tamil Nadu after the demise of Jayalalithaa in 2016 and DMK patriarch Karunanidhi. DMK President Stalin will start his campaign in January 2021.