Son is Chidambaram's 'home' minister

Who`s behind the election campaign of Union Home Minister P Chidambaram? It`s his 37-year-old Cambridge educated son Karti.

With the high profile Congress leader having to spend a lot of time in Delhi, it`s Karti who has been nursing his constituency in Tamil Nadu.

The techno savvy AICC member camps for virtually the whole month in Sivaganga. With a data base of 6000 mobile numbers of party workers, he uses voice messages and SMSes to keep them informed of programmes in the constituency. It`s also to teach voters to fill up Form 6, for instance, if their names are missing in the electoral rolls.

A Sivanandam, a voter, says: "In our MPs absence, his son attends to us. He`s always accessible."

Karti says he`s in no hurry to contest elections himself and seems quite content to rough it out at the crease at the grassroots level.

Says Karti P Chidambaram: "I may be doing backstage work for my father, but I am also front end in the sense that I also address party meetings."

For now, Karti has only inherited his father`s eloquence. And is adding his own ideas to electioneering like sending excerpts of his father`s campaign speeches through voice messages.