DMK working president M.K. Stalin, who is set to be elected the party president, filed his nomination for the post at Anna Arivalayam, the party headquarters, in Chennai on Sunday.
Senior leader and party principal secretary Duraimurugan filed nomination for the post of treasurer, hitherto held by Mr. Stalin.
They are likely to be elected during the party’s general council meeting on August 28 in Chennai.
The process to elect Mr. Stalin as DMK chief following the death of his father and party chief M. Karunanidhi began with the 65-year-old leader formally filing his nomination for the post.
Before filing the papers, Mr. Stalin, Mr. Duraimurugan and senior party colleagues T.R. Baalu and A. Raja visited Dayalu Ammal, Karunanidhi’s wife, at her Gopalapuram residence.
Later they also met party veteran and general secretary K Anbhazhagan and headed straight to the memorials of DMK founder C.N. Annadurai and Karunanidhi at the Marina beach-front and paid floral tributes, party sources said.
Mr. Stalin, who was given a rousing reception on his arrival by partymen at the party headquarters, submitted the nomination papers to DMK organising secretary R.S. Bharathi.
The names of Mr. Stalin and Mr. Duraimurugan were proposed by all 65 DMK district secretaries for the post of president and treasurer respectively.
Talking to reporters, Mr. Raja said Mr. Stalin and Mr. Duraimurugan would be elected “unanimously” at the general council meeting.
Sibling rivalry between Mr. Stalin and his elder brother M.K. Alagiri came to the fore recently, when the latter claimed that true loyalists of Karunanidhi were with him.
Mr. Alagiri, who was expelled from the party by Karunanidhi in 2014, has been questioning the leadership of Mr. Stalin. He has announced he would lead a peace rally in Chennai on September 5, to the mausoleum of Karunanidhi.
How the son rose
Mr. Stalin, the younger son of Karunanidhi, had held several party posts, including that of treasurer and youth-wing secretary.
His journey in the party began early when he campaigned in the 1967 elections as a 14-year-old school student. He became the party’s youth-wing secretary in 1984.
He was put in prison under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act during Emergency in 1976.
Mr. Stalin’s growth has been steady and he became party deputy general secretary in 2003. He was re-elected treasurer for the second five-year term in January 2015.
He became an MLA for the first time in 1989 from the Thousand Lights constituency in Chennai from where he was re-elected thrice.
In 2006, he became the Municipal Administration Minister in the DMK government and went on to become the Deputy Chief Minister in 2009.
