CHENNAI: The Assembly elections are a good nine months away, but the ruling AIADMK has already started strengthening the party in preparation for the poll battle. The party’s leaders Edappadi K Palaniswami and O Panneerselvam on Saturday appointed 11 new organising secretaries, three deputy propaganda secretaries and created new party districts besides appointing secretaries for many districts.
Many former ministers and legislators, and district-level functionaries, have been given key posts in the current reshuffle. V Karuppasamy Pandian, former MLA from Tirunelveli district, has been appointed as an organising secretary. The 10 other organising secretaries are Tiruppur C Sivasamy, Isakki Subbaiah, M Budhichandran, T Rathinavel, V Marutharaj, PG Rajendran, Tirttuani G Hari, Walajabad P Ganesan, S Asaimani and AK Seenivasan.
Minister K Pandiyarajan has been promoted as the party’s deputy propaganda secretary. Along with him, actor Vindhya and ‘Popular’ V Muthiah have also been made deputy propaganda secretary. VPB Paramasivam, MLA representing Vedasanthur constituency has been made secretary to the Youth Brigade, a key wing of the party.
Former Minister TKM Chinnaiya has been appointed as president of MGR Mandram while party spokesperson RM Babu Murugavel will also function as joint secretary to advocates wing. Party sources said already, many party districts have been restructured and a few more changes and new appointments will be effected in the coming days.
Many party districts have been bifurcated and trifurcated for the administrative convenience and new secretaries have been appointed: In all, the party has shuffled the secretaries for 29 districts. Key among them are former Minister V Somasundaram (Kanche-epuram), Chengalpattu West (Chitlapakkam S Rajendran), Chennai Rural (KP Kandan), Tiruvallur north (Siruniyam P Balaraman), Tiruvallur Central (P Benjamin), Tiruvallur west (V Alexander), Tiruvallur East (Madhavaram V Moorthy), Tiruvallur West (BV Ramana), Tiruppathur (KC Veeramani), Villupuram (CVe Shanmugam), Coimbatore Rural South (SP Velumani), Trichy Urban (Vellamandi N Natarajan), Trichy Rural North (M Paranjothi), Nagapattinam (OS Manian), Dindigul East (Natham R Viswanathan) and Dindigul West (Dindigul C Seenivasan).