After the re-organisation of the whole department on 1st October 1951, the Controller of Military Accounts was christened as Controller of Defence Accounts. In 1966 the CDA(ORs) South was shifted from Mysore to Madras. The role and function of CDA (ORs) South, Madras then, was in handling the payment function of JCOs and ORs.

               Later on in January, 1988 the CDA Offices in Bangalore and Madras were swapped and thus the CDA's role at Madras became that of the Regional Controller. In 1989 the administrative control of all the 11 DPDOs in South India along with the ZO(PD), Madras was shifted to the CDA Chennai and  pension to over 1.11 lakh Defence pensioners of southern India is disbursed through these DPDOs till today.

The Regional Study Centre (with a mandate to provide training in functional areas like pension and also to emerge as a launching pad for Computer based training packages and Distance Learning packages) was sanctioned in 1997 and formally came into existence in April 1998.

The CDA Chennai has 54 sub offices spread over 19 locations in the four southern states.