Udhayanidhi's Marathon Campaign: A Journey of 8,465 km with 3,726 Minutes of Impactful Speech
Chennai: In the run up to the April 19 elections that saw most of the leaders hitting the road and reaching out to the people to campaign for their candidates, the one who travelled the most was DMK’s youth wing secretary Udhayanidhi Stalin who covered 8,465 km during the 24 day campaign.
He was one of the few leaders in the state who touched base with supporters, party functionaries and voters in all the 39 Lok Sabha constituencies in the 38 districts of the State and campaigned for the candidates of the DMK-led alliance by addressing the people from 122 campaign points.
But what distinguished him from the other star campaigners of the 2024 elections was his simple down to earth short speeches that clocked a total timing of 3,726 minutes. Most of those speeches were delivered under the blazing sun from atop open vehicles.
The DMK has estimated that 1.24 crore people listened to his speeches that lacked the typical rhetorical flourish associated to political polemics in the State but were nevertheless thought provoking and straight to the point in addressing local, state level and national issues.
In a bid to drive home the point that the Union Government, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was returning just 29 paise for every rupees that it collected as tax from the people of the State, Udhayanidhi Stalin told the listeners that Mr Modi could be addressed as Mr 29 paise, which became a hit for the light-hearted banter invoking a deeper meaning to the narrative.
Like all seasoned politicians, he discussed local issues with the DMK functionaries of the region and then referred to them in his speech by also providing solutions to problems, thus endearing himself to the local people by raising their hopes.
In the 2021 elections, the single brick that he displayed from the election rallies to explain the status of the AIIMS that the Union Government had promised to set up in Madurai became a talking point among the people and in the media. In 2024, it was his straight attack on Modi that drew cheers from the crowds that had gathered to listen to him across the State.
He also highlighted the achievements of the DMK government in the past three years of rule by resorting to the spoken Tamil form in his addresses that had a spontaneous and extemporaneous air to them for the words connected more with the people.
During the long campaign trail, Udhayanidhi Stalin also interacted with people, particularly youth, to know about their problem and even visited some homes of ordinary people to exchange greetings and also partake of simple meals with them.
The strategy adopted by him in taking on Modi and also criticizing AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami only gave a boost to the overall campaign of the DMK-led alliance, particularly that of Chief Minister M K Stalin, taking a firm stand against communalism, fascism and other Hindutva issues that are quintessential to Tamil Nadu politics.
