Under IT scanner, Senthil Balaji a key face in Stalin ministry and DMK mass leader

Balaji, 47, who was born into a poor farming community, holds the electricity and excise portfolios in Chief Minister M K Stalin’s Cabinet. A four-time MLA, he made his electoral debut in 2006 on an AIADMK ticket. He was also in former CM J Jayalalithaa’s Cabinet between 2011 and 2015. He joined the DMK three years later.

His stint as an AIADMK leader was marked by his allegiance to Jayalalithaa. In that period, he had made news for holding special pujas, lighting lakhs of lamps, wearing headgear denoting the party symbol, and breaking coconuts to honour his leader and the party. Balaji was the strategist behind 2013’s Amma water initiative which was aimed at providing affordable drinking water. He had even shaved his head in support of the former CM after she was acquitted in a disproportionate assets case in 2017.

But the two had a falling out subsequently and he lost his Cabinet post and his responsibility as the party’s Karur district secretary in 2015. During the rumblings in the party after Jayalalithaa’s death in 2016, he supported the V K Sasikala-TTV Dhinakaran faction.

Balaji switched to the DMK in 2018. He also managed to quickly make his way up the DMK’s ladder, becoming a key face in the Stalin government now.

But it is his home turf of Karur where he exercises real control. Local leaders say that the job fairs and blood donation camps he organises have amassed him a significant following. In 2021, he had told The Indian Express that the projects were important to keep supporters by his side. “People should be able to contact me directly,” he had said.

Balaji is also credited with setting up e-Seva centres in Karur through which the public can access free government services. Many youngsters in the district’s party circle carry his picture on their cell phone screens, cases and shirts.

The DMK has been on the defensive since the IT raids, which they see as “political vendetta to limit Balaji’s influence”.

Party sources, speaking to The Indian Express, alleged the raids were politically motivated. Sources also claimed that “Balaji and (former finance minister) Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, have been BJP’s main targets ever since DMK returned to power”.

“Rajan was successfully aimed at. The next one is Balaji,” a DMK leader said. “We will support him no matter what… because the BJP can’t do political work and only uses central agencies to smear leaders,” a leader said.

“The searches may aim to imprison Balaji or his brother Ashok before the 2024 elections. The BJP knows they can’t win a seat in western Tamil Nadu as long as Balaji is in power,” he added

“In 2017, IT went after M R Vijayabaskar, a powerful AIADMK minister from Karur. What happened? Nothing. Most of their current raids were premises they already searched in 2019 and 2021. These raids will not affect Balaji in Karur,” a source close to Balaji said.

The IT officials are probing Balaji in connection with a cash-for-job scam. They have also alleged a lack of transparency in the functioning of the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation Limited, which sells foreign liquor in the state.

Balaji was embroiled in an alleged scam in the past too. In 2013, he had faced the Opposition’s ire – including that of Stalin’s – over the Rs 200-crore ticket machine scam.