Chennai: State Sports Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin stepped into the shoes of his father and Chief Minister M K Stalin on Wednesday by inaugurating the 47the Chennai Book Fair, though the invitation for the event had the name of Stalin printed in it, and then took a Vistara flight to New Delhi to personally invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the Khelo India Youth Games to be held from January 19 in four cities.
The inauguration of annual mega event, an honour that is usually bestowed on Chief Ministers, by Udhayanidhi Stalin even when the Chief Minister was in town, set tongues wagging in the political circles on his quick growth in the party and government in his first term as MLA and just over a year after becoming a Minister.
His immediate departure to New Delhi to reportedly invite the Union Sports Minister Anurag Singh Takur and the Prime Minister personally for the Khelo Games is also seen as a privilege for the young minister as only senior party leaders are sent on such assignments if the Chief Minister is unable to do it.
At the Book fair inauguration at the YMCA Grounds in Nandanam, Udhayanidhi Stalin read out the Chief Minister’s message and also presented the Kalaignar Karunanidhi Award and other prizes to writers on behalf of Booksellers and Publishers Association of South India (BAPASI), the organisers of the 19-day book fair.
Since the State Sports Minister’s New Delhi trip was planned in a hurry and his initial itinerary was to board a morning flight, an event scheduled for 11 am to disburse benefits of a welfare scheme in Royapuram was advanced to 9 am and held at his camp office itself.
Then the flight was rescheduled and he went for the Book Fair inauguration in lieu of the Chief Minister though newspapers had carried curtain raisers mentioning the name of Stalin, triggering speculations of his imminent elevation in government.
When the DMK announced its second Youth Wing conference at Salem for December, the political grapevine had it that it was a move to elevate Udhayanidhi Stalin to a higher position in government, possibly the Deputy Chief Minister, in the same fashion in which the First Youth Wing conference in Tirunelveli in 2007 was used to promote M K Stalin as No 2 in the party.
Now since the second conference has been twice postponed, arrangements are being made to conduct it in a grand manner and also ensure that speakers at the event favour the elevation of their secretary to enable the party take the decision on that basis i.e. 'popular demand' in the party.
So, it is just to prepare the ground for crowning Udhayanidhi Stalin as the Number Two in the party and also make him 'popular' in the public domain that he is being made to perform some functions of the Chief Minister like opening the book fair and also meeting the Prime Minister personally in New Delhi, political observers feel.
