Former IAS officer Sasikanth Senthil to be new Tamil Nadu Congress president

New Delhi: Former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Sasikanth Senthil is likely to be the Tamil Nadu Congress president, replacing KS Alagiri.

Senthil, 45, a 2009 Karnataka-cadre IAS officer, had resigned as the deputy commissioner of the state's communally-sensitive Dakshina Kannada district in 2019, saying it was "unethical for him to continue in his line of duty when the fundamental building blocks of our diverse democracy are being compromised in an unprecedented manner."

A year later in 2020, he joined the Congress and was a part of the grand old party's war room for the 2021 assembly elections in Tamil Nadu. He also helped the Congress in the 2023 assembly elections in Karnataka.

Last month, Senthil was named as the head of the party's central war room for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

On many occasions in the past, Senthil had expressed his desire to work in his home state Tamil Nadu.

Alagiri had taken over as the Tamil Nadu Congress chief in February 2019 ahead of the last Lok Sabha elections.

Interestingly, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Tamil Nadu is headed by a former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer K Annamalai. He took over as the Tamil Nadu BJP chief in July 2021. 

Annamalai, 40, a Karnataka-cadre IPS officer, was popularly known as 'Singham', a sobriquet for a tough cop. He too resigned from the service in 2019 and joined the BJP in 2020.