Modi springs a surprise, calls on Karuna

Sending out a subtle political message to the DMK in Tamil Nadu where the AIADMK is in disarray after Jayalalithaa's death, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday sprang a surprise by calling on the ageing DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi and inquiring about his health.

Meeting the nonagenarian Dravidian politician was not on the agenda of the Prime Minister, who was in Chennai for a few hours to attend two private functions -- the platinum jubilee celebrations of Tamil daily Dina Thanthi and the wedding ceremony of the daughter of a former PMO official.

According to sources, Modi had decided only on Sunday evening to make an unscheduled stopover at Karunanidhi's Gopalapuram residence and his secretaries got in touch with the DMK leader's son M K Stalin, who was in Sharjah.

Stalin returned to Chennai early in the morning and the news of Modi's “courtesy call” was broken on Twitter by BJP leader P Muralidhar Rao a couple of hours before the scheduled meeting.

Stalin and his half-sister Kanimozhi received Modi and took him inside the house where the Prime Minister had a visibly cordial meeting with Karunanidhi, his wives Dayalu Ammal, who is suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and Rajathi Ammal.

On the record both the BJP and the DMK leaders refused to attach any political significance to the meeting. “It was only a courtesy meeting considering that Karunanidhi is the senior most political leader of Tamil Nadu. As the DMK leader was largely confined to his house in the past year, Modi met him as a matter of courtesy,” said BJP State unit president Tamilisai Soundararajan. Karunanidhi's daughter Kanimozhi too said one cannot read much politically into the meeting of the two leaders. However, off the record, a second line DMK leader said, “You cannot say there was no political message from the visit. Considering that the AIADMK is on a weak footing now, we do see some signals from Modi through his gesture.”