The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) President and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister. M.K. Stalin, is well on way to politically crack the ‘Kongu Mandalam’ code, where the results in the May 2021 Assembly polls were not up to his expectations. The tremendous response to the recent twoday extensive visit by Mr. Stalin to Tirupur and Coimbatore districts, two most industrialised districts in the State after the ChennaiKancheepuram-Tiruvallur belt, speaks loud and clear of a road-map he has drawn to bring back the DMK as a fighting force in these districts, ahead of the Urban Local Bodies polls. Though the DMK and its allies including the Congress, Left parties, MDMK, VCK, IUML and KDMK (Kongunadu Makkal Desiya Katchi launched by E.R. Easwaran with a good presence in the western districts of Salem, Erode, Namakkal, Tirupur, Coimbatore and Karur which comprise the ‘Kongu belt’) swept the 2019 Lok Sabha polls across Tamil Nadu, the Assembly polls outcome in this belt was disappointing. During the earlier decades, the DMK had held considerable sway among the people of ‘Kongu Mandalam’. Late Chief Minister Kalaiganar M Karunanidhi used to take pride in this reality with his pithy saying, ‘Singanallur Kazhaga Kottam (a fortress of the DMK)’, using that place name in Coimbatore to figuratively refer to the entire ‘Kongu Mandalam’. Karunanidhi would often fondly recall his early associations with Coimbatore during his days as a script writer for Tamil films and cherished his career path that began in ‘Modern Theatres’ in Salem, where he cut his teeth amid shaky beginnings in filmdom....