Durai Murugan will continue to be DMK Treasurer: Stalin

Senior DMK leader Durai Murugan, one of the close confidants of late M Karunanidhi, will continue to be the party’s treasurer as his resignation from the post has been kept in abeyance for now.

DMK President M K Stalin said the General Council of the party could not be convened due to the COVID-19 situation and ordered Durai Murugan to continue in the post of treasurer, no.3 in the pecking order.

The announcement came on a day the DMK celebrated the 97th birth anniversary of Karunanidhi.

Durai Murugan resigned as treasurer of the DMK in mid-March as he expressed his interest to contest the elections for General Secretary, a post that fell vacant after incumbent K Anbazhagan died on March 7. Stalin accepted Durai Murugan’s resignation and announced that elections for both general secretary and treasurer will be held on March 29.

However, the elections could not happen as the General Council meeting was postponed due to COVID-19. As both the posts are vacant for over two months, Stalin said in a statement on Wednesday that the atmosphere is not conducive to conduct elections for the two posts by convening the General Council.

“Based on this, I announce that Durai Murugan will continue as the treasurer of the party as I have kept in abeyance his resignation from the post of treasurer by exercising powers accorded to me in the party by-laws,” Stalin said.

Durai Murugan is likely to succeed Anbazhagan, who held the post from 1977 till his last breath on March 7, as the fourth general secretary of the party, at least a few months later.

Former Union Minister A Raja, a prominent Dalit leader, former state ministers E V Velu and I Periyasamy and party’s parliamentary party leader T R Baalu are said to be in the race for the Treasurer's post as and when elections are held. There is also clamour for Kanimozhi, Stalin’s half-sister, to be elevated to the Treasurer’s post.

Anbazhagan, who was General Secretary of the DMK for 43 years and a fellow traveller of its patriarch M Karunanidhi for more than six decades, died on March 7 due to age-related illness.