Inside DMK’s Rehearsal for Power

Inside Arivalayam, the light doesn’t fall evenly. It lingers on certain names, certain doors, the brass plate of a newly assigned office. Kanimozhi Karunanidhi has been allocated a room beside her father’s old office, in what appears to be a quiet but deliberate move. Chief Minister MK Stalin and party general secretary Duraimurugan are the only others who have designated offices at Arivalayam.

As the party prepares to face assembly polls next year, its internal adjustments have taken on the rhythm of a long preface. Stalin remains the centre, with just enough steel beneath his rhetoric to signal control. Around him, however, the frame has begun to shift. Udhayanidhi Stalin, elevated to Deputy Chief Minister, now carries not only portfolios but expectation. His speeches are utilitarian, stripped of metaphor, dense with schemes, deadlines, and references to voter databases. This is a politics of function, not flair. At a recent youth gathering, he reminded party workers to begin booth-level voter registration immediately and to approach every unresolved grievance with a commitment to at least try.

Kanimozhi has meanwhile moved from the periphery to somewhere closer to the nucleus. Her portfolio as southern regional in-charge has placed her in contact with local units, while her recent diplomatic performance in Madrid signals a kind of cultural literacy the party tends to prize. Early in June, the Kanimozhi-led Group 6 of the Indian all-party parliamentary delegation arrived in Spain on the final leg of its multi-nation outreach, where the DMK MP fielded questions as a stateswoman. When asked about India’s national language, she replied without hesitation, “Unity in diversity”—a phrase that, while familiar, landed with unusual force. The moment was brief, but it travelled. Diaspora audiences circulated the clip, Tamil leaders took notice, and even opposition voices hesitated to criticise.

Meanwhile, Duraimurugan, one of the last remaining bridges to the party’s earlier decades, has been assigned the Law portfolio. He remains essential, though not without friction. Among younger functionaries, there are murmurs: about centralisation, about a slowness to respond, about the feeling that the party’s older guard has grown too comfortable in legacy. These aren’t calls for removal, just signals that the ground is no longer entirely still.

Part of that restlessness is being addressed head-on. The DMK has launched a new fellowship programme through its mouthpiece and think tank ecosystem, offering roles to writers, researchers, and young political aspirants. Still, the party cannot entirely script its present. A public feud between the Maran brothers—Dayanidhi, a party MP, and Kalanithi, the media baron who controls Sun TV—has surfaced with bitterness. Legal filings and corporate allegations have left the DMK leadership fielding questions it would rather avoid. Though the matter concerns shareholdings and family control, it is hard to ignore the proximity to power. The party has remained neutral in public, but the discomfort is evident. These are not the battles it wants visible ahead of an election.

The party’s membership drive, “Oraniyil Tamil Nadu”, is being spoken of less as a campaign and more as a census of loyalty. Targets have been issued to each polling booth. Party workers are expected to knock on every door, not just to persuade but to register. It is a model of electoral preparation that favours infrastructure over ideology. Even in its public sparring, DMK has maintained an air of amused superiority. “The AIADMK IT wing is not competent enough to war with us,” said Minister TRB Rajaa recently, brushing off online attacks with the confidence of a party that sees its digital machinery as both weapon and shield. At a recent internal meet, Stalin said, “No anti-incumbency, no bunch of clowns can defeat the DMK.”

In 2021, the DMK won 133 of Tamil Nadu’s 234 assembly seats. With its allies, the Secular Progressive Alliance crossed the halfway mark comfortably, reaching 159. That victory was emphatic, but the margin now feels narrower. Since then, electricity tariffs have risen, property taxes revised upward, and water and milk prices adjusted to reflect cost recovery rather than comfort. The party is aware that goodwill, like revenue, is finite. And that delivery, not legacy, will determine what endures.

That awareness has reshaped DMK’s posture. There is less emphasis on inherited capital, more on institutional memory and political muscle. The party is not clinging to nostalgia; it is rehearsing continuity with the focus of a government that knows the next election will be won not in rhetoric, but in response time, data fidelity, and door-to-door persistence.

ArivalayamDMKgenerational recalibrationinternal grumblesMK Stalinprice hikesTamil Nadu politics