The Direct Torque Control (DTC) technique for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors (PMSM) is receiving increased attention due to its simplicity and robust dynamic response when compared with other control techniques. The classical switching table based DTC results in large flux and torque ripples in the motors. Several studies have been reported in the literature on classical DTC. However, there are only limited studies that actually discuss or evaluate the classical DTC. This paper proposes, novel switching table / DTC methods for PMSMs to reduce torque ripples. In this paper, two DTC schemes are proposed. The six sector and twelve sector methodology is considered in DTC scheme I and DTC scheme II, respectively. In both DTC schemes a simple modification is made to the classical DTC structure. The two level inverter available in the classical DTC is eliminated by replacing it with a three level Neutral Point Clamped (NPC) inverter. To further improve the performance of the proposed DTC scheme I, the available 27 voltage vectors are allowed to form different groups of voltage vectors such as Large - Zero (LZ), Medium - Zero (MZ) and Small - Zero (SZ), where as in DTC scheme II, all of the voltage vectors are considered to form a switching table. Based on these groups, a novel switching table is proposed. The proposed DTC schemes are comparatively investigated with the classical DTC and existing literatures through theory analysis and computer simulations. The superiority of the proposed DTC method is also confirmed by experimental results. It can be observed that the proposed techniques can significantly reduces the torque ripples and improves the quality of current waveform when compared with traditional and existing methods.