M.K. Stalin, who took charge as Tamil Nadu chief minister on Friday, approved a Rs 4,000 cash relief for every household with a ration card to soften the income losses caused by the pandemic and extended the state health insurance scheme to cover Covid treatment costs in private hospitals.

Arriving at the secretariat here after governor Banwarilal Purohit swore in the new DMK ministry headed by the chief minister and his council of 33 ministers at the Raj Bhavan, Stalin signed orders implementing the top-priority pre-poll promises of the DMK.

During the campaign, Stalin had said the 2.07 crore households that come under the public distribution system would each get a cash relief of Rs 4,000 from June 3, his late father K. Karunanidhi’s birthday. However, with the pandemic raging, the new chief minister directed that Rs 2,000 be paid to each family immediately as first instalment.

Slashing price of milk sold by the State Apex Milk Cooperative — Aavin — by Rs 3 a litre, allowing free travel for all women and girl students in government buses in urban areas, and setting up a department to redress public grievances in every constituency were the other steps Stalin took on Friday.

As Stalin took oath at the Raj Bhavan earlier in the day, his wife, Durga Stalin, covered her face, overwhelmed with tears of joy.

Stalin’s new council of ministers is a mix of experienced hands like veterans Duraimurugan and K.N. Nehru, and young faces, including three Dalits. His new finance minister, Dr Pazhanivel Thyagarajan, is from an illustrious political family in Madurai and holds an MBA degree in finance from the Sloan School of Management, MIT, and a PhD from the State University of New York, and had been an investment banker and teacher in the US.

The DMK cabinet also has two members each from the Muslim and Christian communities — Ginjee K.S. Masthan, S.M. Nazer, Gita Jeevan and T. Mano Thangaraj — to send a reassuring message to the religious minorities.

Re-elected to the Assembly from the Kolathur constituency in Chennai for the third time, Stalin, born on March 1, 1953, cut his teeth in Dravidian politics when he was just 13 in 1966. He had then launched the Gopalapuram Youth DMK, organising debates on social issues and recording speeches of top DMK leaders.

Karunanidhi had initially thought of naming his third son, born of his second marriage to Dayalu Ammal, as Ayya Durai to honour two great leaders of the Dravidian Movement — Periyar and Annadurai.

But when Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953, just four days after Karunanidhi’s third son was born, addressing a condolence meeting in Chennai he named the baby after the Russian.

A year’s rigorous detention under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act during the Emergency (1975-76) threw Stalin into the turmoil of politics.

After passing out of Madras Christian College High School, Stalin enrolled for BA in history at Presidency College in Chennai. He wrote his final exam in the presence of a police escort during the Emergency. His political journey has been a “fire-and-ice process”, Stalin would recall later in a speech.

His name was his undoing as the Church Park Convent school agreed to give him a seat if his parents agreed to eschew the Russian “Stalin” from his name. But a dogged Karunanidhi preferred to change the school, not his son’s name.

Stalin was first inducted into the DMK general council in 1973.

In the mid-1980s, Stalin took over as the state secretary of the DMK’s youth wing and won his maiden election to the Assembly from the Thousand Lights constituency in 1989. He became the first directly elected mayor of Chennai in 1996.

As the years passed, it became increasingly clear that the DMK’s next generation political leadership had begun to revolve around “Thalapathi (commander) Stalin”, notwithstanding the rivalry with his Madurai-based elder brother M.K. Azhagiri. The siblings’ relations came a full circle when Azhagiri wished Stalin on his electoral success on Thursday. Azhagiri’s elder son Durai Dayanidhi was among those present at the swearing-in on Friday.

Stalin had been made deputy chief minister in May 2009.

In January 2017, Stalin was elevated as the DMK’s working president when party patriarch Karunanidhi withdrew from active politics. He was unanimously elected DMK president at its general council on August 28, 2018, after Karunanidhi’s death on August 7 that year.

Since then, Stalin has been leading the DMK’s poll campaigns — first in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when he proposed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for the Prime Minister’s post, and in the recent Assembly polls.

Puducherry CM

In neighbouring Puducherry, All India N.R. Congress leader N. Rangasamy was sworn in as chief minister by Lt Governor Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan on Friday afternoon, but no other minister took oath.