DMK to Create 110 District Secretary Posts to Centralise Party Leadership

The DMK is set to create 110 district secretary posts across Tamil Nadu, a structural change that will allocate just two Assembly seats per district secretary and concentrate organisational control with the state leadership in Chennai.

The restructuring marks a significant shift from the 1970s, when the party functioned with roughly a dozen regional leaders who held broad ground-level influence. Under the new arrangement, a total of 20 district secretaries will be replaced, and about 30 new district secretaries are slated to be appointed soon.

In Chennai, the party plans to appoint eight to ten district secretaries. This expansion will curtail the jurisdiction of senior leaders and former ministers P.K. Sekar Babu and Ma. Subramanian to just two seats each. Younger party figures, including Prabhakar Raja, Karthick Mohan, and Ezhilan Naganathan, are currently in the race for the newly created district secretary positions in the capital.

The move will also diminish the influence of several former ministers who previously crossed over from the AIADMK, including Anitha R. Radhakrishnan, K.K.S.S.R. Ramachandran, S. Reghupathi, S. Muthusamy, and E.V. Velu. Other senior figures, such as former minister T.M. Anbarasan and former MLA K. Sundar, are set to lose their district posts due to age and the length of their tenures.

Additional leaders expected to be eased out of their posts or moved away from ground-level positions include former ministers M.R.K. Panneerselvam, R. Gandhi, S.S. Sivasankar, and K.R. Periyakaruppan, along with longtime district secretaries G. Thalapathi, P. Murthy, S.R. Sivalingam, Poondi S. Kalaivanan, Cumbum C. Ramakrishnan, K.S. Masthan, K. Anbazhagan, and K. Selvaraj.

The administrative overhaul follows an election outcome where the DMK secured two out of 37 constituencies across Chennai, Chengalpet, Kanchipuram, and Thiruvallur, securing 24.19 per cent of the vote in the 2026 Assembly polls.