I have a program in C that communicates via UDP with another program (in Java) and then does process manipulation (start/stop) based on the UDP pkt exchange.
Now this C program has been legacy and I want to convert it to Python - do you think Python will be a good choice for the tasks mentioned?
Yes, I think Python is a good choice, if all your platforms support it.  Since this is a network program, I'm assuming the network is your runtime bottleneck?  That's likely to still be the case in Python.  If you really do need to speed it up, you can include your long-since-debugged, speedy C as Python modules.
What is the feasibility of porting a legacy C program to Python?