Tamil Nadu CM Stalin justifies DMK's leadership changes, says revamp aims at electoral strategy ahead of 2026 polls, not a purge
Chennai: More shuffles in the DMK’s administrative machinery were in the offing since change was a prerequisite for growth and development and whatever changes effected now should not be construed as a weeding process but seen as a renovation of infrastructure aimed at redrawing the electoral strategy in the one year period at hand before the 2026 Assembly elections, Chief Minister M K Stalin said.
Justifying the leadership changes made in the party’s organizational set up at the district level, Stalin, in an epistle addressed to the ‘brothers and sisters of M Karunanidhi’ on Friday, said that not a speck could be moved from the party headquarters, referring to BJP State president K Annamalai’s metaphorical statement that he would be around till every brick was pulled out of the Anna Arivalayam.
He said the edifice of the party headquarters was conceived and constructed by Karunanidhi with the hard work of the party cadre as the foundation and what best that could happen to anyone dreaming of pulling out the bricks was to land head first on the ground and get jolted out of the dream as not mote could be touched.
Rivals of the DMK were jealous of the DMK’s growth and it was out of that spite they were unable to watch the edifice stand tall, he said, adding that the State government had been able to overcome the difficulties brought about by the Union BJP government’s malicious act of cutting all funding for the State’s projects.
Though Tamil Nadu came on top of a variety of indices prepared by the Union Government agencies like the NIti Aagyog, the State had been betrayed and its rights taken away by the vindictive BJP but the DMK Government ensured that it remained the number one State in the country as it continued to roll out the welfare schemes for the people against all odds.
It was that good work of the government that had endeared itself to the people who were prepared to give the DMK a seventh term in 2026, he said. Acknowledging the fact that the six terms that the DMK won was due to the hard work of the cadre, he called upon them to continue the work to ensure that the party got a seventh term to rule the State.
Recalling his request to the people of the State to give them ‘10 years’ to set right the wrongs committed by the 10-year AIADMK rule when he was addressing a campaign meeting ahead of the 2021 State elections at Siruganur in Coimbatore, Stalin said that the people were satisfied with the Dravidian Model government in the first term and were prepared to give a second term.
However, whenever a good opportunity came to the DMK, conspiracies would be hatched to sabotage it and the masks would be exposed too, he said. It was on that line that illicit political relationships with no use for the State and its people were being formed, spawning a gang of campaigners shouting their throats out for money, he said.
To tear the mask of those paid campaigners and ensure the victory of the DMK and its allies, some changes were being required at the party’s administrative level and they were being affected, he said.
