Ready to accept Stalin's leadership if readmitted: MK Alagiri

CHENNAI: In a conciliatory turn, late DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi's elder son MK Alagiri, who had nursed an enduring sibling rivalry with MK Stalin, has said he is ready to accept his brother as the undisputed leader -- "if he is readmitted into the party."

Dismissed from the party for making statements against the leadership in 2014, Alagiri had been often criticising the DMK, especially with a grouse to the significance Stalin has been given in party affairs.

After Karunanidhi's death on August 7 in Kauvery Hospital, Alagiri had made a controversial claim that his father's true loyalists are by his side. Recently, he had threatened with "consequences" should Stalin ignore his entreaties to be accepted back into the party.


"Right now, my stance is that if I am accepted back into the party, I will accept his (Stalin) leadership," Alagiri told ET. He refused to answer queries about the change in position from about two weeks ago, when he had hit out strongly at Stalin's leadership.

Alagiri had often pointed out to the drubbing the DMK had received in the RK Nagar bypolls conducted to fill up the vacancy created by the death of Jayalaithaa.

Alagiri's readiness to be reinducted into the party and apparent willingness to work with Stalin arrives hours before Stalin will host a list of national political influencers, from BJP leader Nitin Gadkari to NCP leader Sharad Pawar to the Congress's Ghulam Nabi Azad.