CHENNAI: Days before the June 3 celebrations to mark the 103rd birth anniversary of former Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi, DMK’s longest-serving president, silence stalked the corridors of Anna Arivayalam, the party headquarters, a departure from the bustle of the past five years when the Dravidian major was in power.
Behind the bronze statues of party founder CN Annadurai and Kalaignar — as Karunanidhi is known — at the entrance, stood a clutch of older party men, who had travelled to Chennai from across the state, trying to decipher May 4 Assembly election results that upended their world.
“Those fellows just kept putting reels. They came to power just by putting reels,” one of them said, unable to accept even a month later that their storied 77-year-old party lost to the fledgling TVK.
Senior party leaders too, including president and former CM MK Stalin, have publicly blamed social media – Instagram in particular – and the ‘glamour’ of actor-turned-politician CM C Joseph Vijay for the stunning defeat but the truth is more complicated. The roots of DMK’s failure run deeper than mere anti-incumbency just as those of TVK’s success goes beyond celebrity and social media finesse.
TNIE interviewed more than 40 functionaries, strategists and leaders in the party and found fundamental problems that include a surplus of strategists and power centres that stymied decisions, flow of information and effectively throttled any bid to address the simmering anti-incumbency that the party was facing. These factors, indeed by some accounts, may have even contributed to governance moves that fuelled the anti-incumbency. However, it remains to be seen if these issues find a place in the report to be submitted by the party’s committee, analysing the causes for the electoral debacle, on June 10.
Too many cooks spoil the broth
The DMK went into the election with at least five strategy firms operating in parallel. Populus Empowerment Network (PEN), an in-house strategy firm run by Stalin’s son-in-law Sabarisan, catered to both the party and the then CM. Stalin’s son and then deputy CM Udhayanidhi Stalin had a team managing his own image and political strategy. Stalin’s sister and party women’s wing secretary Kanimozhi Karunanidhi, the MP from Thoothukudi, had hired a firm to handle her public outreach and social media presence. Apart from these, the party had also retained the services of IPAC, the Prashant Kishor-founded political consultancy, and Robbin Sharma of Showtime Consulting.
“When PEN came up with a proposal, IPAC turned it down and vice versa. Whatever was planned by IPAC at the state level, got the nod from the party high command and was passed down to all the regions,” explained an IPAC worker who preferred not to be named.
According to multiple accounts, on paper, it was IPAC’s role to ideate strategy and PEN’s to implement it on the ground. But those at the receiving end of these plans found themselves pulled in disparate directions at the same time. “Multiple strategies, uncoordinated efforts, different instructions and multiple central strategy teams made constituency-level work very difficult for us,” complained a frustrated district secretary from the western region.
The surfeit of voices also effectively drowned out potentially valuable feedback. For instance, shortly after the 2024 Lok Sabha election results, PEN had flagged that the anti-BJP plank around which it had built its campaign was running out of steam. “Our warning was clear. If the same ‘Delhi vs Tamil Nadu’ framing was redeployed in 2026, it would fail. But with so many competing voices in the room, the advice was drowned out. The party went to the polls on a script it had already used,” a PEN analyst said.
“The Delhi vs Tamil Nadu line no longer worked on the ground, especially with a new entrant like Vijay targeting the DMK at the state level and the BJP ideologically,” an analyst with PEN said.
Another move the party might now be ruing was the decision to ignore the TVK and Vijay during the campaign – against the advice of some of the PEN strategists.
Party workers expressed frustration with the functioning of PEN as well.
“Beyond headline management, we were not given any insights on the ground. We were just following whatever instructions PEN gave us. It was just not us; they (PEN) even kept the party high command in the dark,” a southern district secretary said.
Some second-rung leaders from across the state also told TNIE that the campaign work given by PEN kept them away from addressing anti-incumbency at the constituency level.
Anti-incumbency unheard
Interestingly, party workers on the ground believe that the centralised strategising through consultants has taken the DMK far from its roots and inadvertently shielded the leadership from the realities of the anti-incumbency they were seeing on the ground.
“The party leadership had earlier worked closer with the people and devised strategies, region and constituency-wise. This time, the leadership seemed quite distant from the ground,” explained one second-rung leader. “For instance, when our thalaivar (Stalin) led the election campaign in 2016 and in 2021, we began from ‘Thinnai Pracharam’ (porch meetings). Even our youth wing leader (Udhayanidhi) began his campaign in 2019 from one such local effort in Theni district,” said the leader.
“Traditionally, we would identify local-level anti-incumbency and would work on it for months before the election. For instance, in some localities, bad roads would be a cause of anger. In such a case, despite being MLAs or ministers, we would push the local body and the councillor concerned to get the work done somehow, which would ease the anger to an extent. There have been times when we laid roads just a day before the Model Code of Conduct came into force. But even such efforts were not initiated this time,” the leader told TNIE.
The party also was hesitant to respond to or act on any criticism levelled by the opposition or social organisations, leaving public sentiments unheard and unaddressed. Worse, on social media, where the TVK was gaining momentum, the party IT wing and larger DMK social media ecosystem further eroded goodwill with targeted harassment of critics.
“Although the distasteful tweets were not directly from the IT wing, the approach, tone and tenor of those backing the party were very arrogant and rude on social media. This, instead of attracting people to the party, dissuaded them,” a former IT wing functionary noted.
The consequences were most evident in its devastating poll results from Chennai, Kancheepuram, Chengalpattu and Tiruvallur, where the party’s failure to read the people’s mood ensured even Stalin was defeated in his Kolathur seat.
“All was not good in Chennai since TVK entered into the electoral fray, but the district secretaries and PEN told us that they would make it work. But, just three days before the campaign ended, we were told that the situation was bad in the capital region and that’s why all the leaders started rushing to Chennai from April 17,” said a DMK youth wing functionary.
According to a top source privy to the developments, there had been internal discussions on fielding Udhayanidhi from the Tiruvarur constituency in the delta region, a traditional stronghold, and Stalin from his son’s Chepauk-Triplicane constituency instead.
“But before we could decide and announce, the TVK took it up as a campaign issue. So, PEN advised the party to field both leaders from the same seats. On the ground, whatever efforts the cadres put in did not work. The people responsible for this are the district secretaries, who kept the leadership in the dark and did not communicate the ground reality to them,” a top source told TNIE.
DMK lost 14 of the 16 Chennai constituencies, with only Sekar Babu and Udhayanidhi keeping their seats.
Power centres
The commissions and omissions of the district secretaries in Chennai are examples of the regional strongmen who insisted on having their way at all times, more often than not to the detriment of the party.
“The regional strongmen simply ignored public anger as minor disruptions that would not reflect in the election. But the results showed otherwise. A classic example is the handling of sanitary workers’ protests outside the Ripon Building in Chennai,” one of the strategists working for the party told TNIE.
“Be it Madurai or Chennai, the party leadership could not overrule suggestions from the regional strongmen or district secretaries, since they are the ones expected to ensure victory of the candidates. As a result, the party high command was forced to give tickets to candidates in certain constituencies despite knowing that the person was likely to lose,” said a second-rung leader from the southern region.
That even the party president Stalin felt compelled to work around one of his district secretaries rather than overrule him exemplifies how deeply entrenched the parallel power structures had become. The Egmore constituency became a telling example. The party high command wanted to renominate I Paranthaman but district secretary PK Sekar Babu had other ideas – and prevailed. Sekar Babu declined to respond to TNIE’s request for his comments on the matter.
In fact, Stalin is learnt to have told a candidate of his choice in the Chennai region that he personally wished to give him the ticket. “But the leader said that if he did, the district secretary would intentionally make the candidate lose,” a source privy to the conversation told TNIE. The seat was given to someone else who lost.
Such moves antagonised not only prospective candidates but also party workers in every region. The same dynamic played out in the western region too. V Senthil Balaji was brought in as Coimbatore in-charge at the last minute, disrupting an existing local ecosystem, shared a local leader. “If the party wanted to focus on the western region, they should have brought him in much earlier or found a local leader who could actually win there. Bringing in Senthil Balaji at the last minute caused too much disturbance,” said a local party functionary.
Similarly, while the party high command had nominated former minister R Gandhi’s son Vinoth Gandhi as the candidate for the Ranipet constituency, at the last minute, Gandhi filed his nomination papers after negotiation with the leadership.
The power of these leaders has also thwarted new talent from entering the party and resulted in a perpetuation of nepotism instead. A party functionary pointed out that of the 16 candidates fielded in Chennai – barring the leaders – at least four are ‘nepo kids’ when the city already has two ‘nepo kids’ as MPs.
“At a time when the opponent is taking us on nepotism, the party could have given a chance to newcomers or upcoming leaders. But there seems to be no chance for any newcomers in Chennai unless they have the blessings of the district secretaries,” a party functionary said.
Governance fails
The actions of regional heavyweights affected governance as well, if senior officials are to be believed.
“People were not seriously worried about Rs 10 being charged extra per bottle of liquor, but were really worried about graft at government offices. They were also worried about corrupt ministers taking charge of important departments. Despite receiving complaints, the leadership was not allowed to function. Though leaders Stalin or Udhayanidhi were ready to take action, those in the second rung appeased them and did not let them act,” a senior IAS officer told TNIE, on condition of anonymity.
The officer said the party’s second-rung leaders, many of them former ministers, were not genuinely interested in empowering marginalised people. “Several schemes, including the dedicated TN Hajj house in Nanganallur, had to wait years to materialise. It was the senior ministers in the DMK government, who were the biggest hurdles,” the officer added.
The DMK swept into power in 2021 after a decade in the opposition benches. Leaders have pointed out that 2026 is hardly the party’s worst defeat – that distinction belongs to the 1991 polls – but it cannot be denied that TVK’s win has upended traditional political dynamics in Tamil Nadu.
The question then arises is whether the party’s postmortem of its performance will be a perfunctory exercise or an effort in genuine introspection and course correction. The answer will determine if the DMK emerges from its defeat as a rejuvenated opposition or a party still at war with itself.