DMK takes up sweeping structural overhaul, sets age caps

In Tamil Nadu, the principal opposition DMK unveiled a structural overhaul in its organisation on Saturday fixing strict age caps and limiting term for party posts following its electoral setback in the April 2026 Assembly election. The party's executive committee, which met at Anna Arivalayam - the DMK state headquarters in Chennai,- with its president M K Stalin in the chair, passed crucial resolutions to radically restructure the organisation setup. Under the new blueprint, the DMK will expand its organisational districts from 78 to 110, with each district broadly mapped across two Assembly constituencies to ensure localised administration.
The meeting comes amid growing demands from within the DMK for organisational elections and changes to the party’s existing administrative structure. Addressing the meeting Stalin said the party had only lost an election, not suffered a permanent defeat. Let us consider this as an opportunity we have been given to plan the future of the
party and acknowledged that the functioning of party office-bearers was among the reasons for the defeat, and said mistakes must be openly admitted. He noted that after the defeat, he had constituted a 38-member field study committee that gathered constituency-wise feedback, besides receiving tens of thousands of opinions through a dedicated website. Based on this, a restructuring committee headed by Thangam Thennarasu was formed to draft the plan of action, which was later turned into resolutions after consulting senior functionaries.
The resolutions said that the maximum age for a Branch Committee Secretary has been fixed at 45 years. A person elected as Branch Committee Secretary can hold the post for a maximum of two terms. Branch Committees will be formed in Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Tiruchirappalli, and Salem corporations, and in other corporations wherever necessary, to strengthen the Ward Committees. "We must soon begin a fresh membership drive. The membership process must be honest and genuine," Stalin said.