Do we like M. K. Stalin?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A decent record on women's welfare and climate, with no harmful words of his own found, held back by a contested response to the Karur tragedy and unresolved allegations.
Stalin was born in 1953, the son of DMK patriarch M. Karunanidhi, and was campaigning for the party as a 14-year-old in 1967. He was arrested under the MISA law during the Emergency and jailed. From there it was the long climb: DMK youth wing head in 1984, a legislator from 1989, Chennai mayor from 1996, deputy chief minister in 2009, and DMK president in 2018.
Not everything on the way up was smooth. In 2001 he and his father were arrested over alleged corruption in a flyover project, but police later dropped the case for lack of evidence. That's the sort of allegation that has followed Dravidian-party leaders for decades, and it was thrown at him again this year.
On the harm check, nothing turned up from his own mouth that demeans LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet. His government's medical council made conversion therapy for LGBTQIA+ people professional misconduct in 2022, though that followed court directions and national medical guidelines, and the report raised questions about enforcement. He launched a Climate Change Mission, promising Tamil Nadu would hit carbon neutrality well before 2070. The gap: we found no clear statement from him on same-sex marriage or trans rights beyond that, so this is a pass on the record we could find.
The recent stoush is a doozy. In the Assembly on 7 September, Vijay made a jaw gesture during a debate about Stalin's MISA detention, and the DMK protested. Vijay said it was involuntary, and also raised decades-old corruption allegations citing the Sarkaria Commission report. Stalin replied in a video, saying his jawbone was broken in custody, calling the allegations politically motivated, and claiming the ED is used politically.
The low point of his time in government was the Karur stampede, where 41 people died at a Vijay rally in 2025. In the Assembly Stalin blamed a seven-hour delay in Vijay's arrival and poor organisation, saying 606 police were deployed. The opposition leader said the tragedy could have been avoided with proper precautions. Where you land depends on whether you read his account as accountability or as pointing the finger at a rival.
The good stuff is real. In 2023 he launched a Rs 1,000 monthly payment for women, reaching nearly 1.06 crore of them, and framed it as recognition of unpaid household work. He has also fought the Centre hard over NEET, Hindi and delimitation, challenging Amit Shah to give straight answers on all three.