Did Karunanidhi get timing wrong on Delhi visit?

New Delhi: When aging DMK supremo M Karunandidhi takes the mid-morning flight back to Chennai on Tuesday, his hands won't be entirely empty. He has the partial consolation that the CBI did not oppose his daughter Kanimozhi's bail plea in the court. But that may not be enough to light up his Diwali.

Disappointed DMK leaders believe that the timing of Karunanidhi's Delhi visit may have brought about this Dark Diwali. It is being suggested that the DMK chief's highly publicised meetings with Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh just a day before the court hearing, may not have gone down well with the special court.

Hinting that the party chief may have been 'ill advised', a senior DMK member said, "Our leader is the senior-most politician in the country today, he has vast experience. He's not the one to make mistakes—if the timing was wrong, it was not intentional."

Karunanidhi's Delhi trip, if the DMK insiders are to be believed, was decided on October 21, when the counting for the local body polls got over.

Having not met his daughter for four months because of the local body polls, sources said, he was keen to visit Kani right away. The high-profile meeting with Sonia and the PM was added on the schedule later.

Now with Kani not securing a bail, father Karunanidhi is in no mood to entertain any talk on issues such as DMK filling up its Cabinet slots.

"This is not the time to discuss these things. Our primary focus is to fight the 2G case legally (and, of course, Kani's bail plea)," a DMK leader said.

Already on the backfoot, the party feels any other political move would send a "wrong signal".

Though there's hint of light at the end of a dark tunnel for Kanimozhi, there's no such ray of hope for Raja.

So the DMK dark phase is unlikely to get over if even Kani's manages to get bail. Raja may prove to be a headache that could again strain the DMK-Congress relationship in the Centre, which Karunanidhi tried to mend during his trip to Delhi.

The DMK chief is said to have offered the PM help in the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project, which has run into trouble. Sources said that the PM, in response, reminded him that the DMK slots in the Union Cabinet is still vacant.