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Actor Vijay’s fans win more 115 seats in Tamil Nadu local body polls
This is the first time that members of the All Indian Thalapathy Vijay Makkal Iyakkam (AITVMI) contested an election and managed to outdo Kamal Hassan’s Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) and Seeman’s Naam Thamizhar Katch
Chennai: Tamil actor Vijay has been hinting at his entry into politics for a decade and he silently tested waters in the recently concluded rural local body elections where members from his fan club have won in 115 of the 169 seats from where they contested, according results announced by the state election commission.
Though the number is not big, this is the first time that members of the All Indian Thalapathy Vijay Makkal Iyakkam (AITVMI) contested an election and managed to outdo Kamal Hassan’s Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) and Seeman’s Naam Thamizhar Katchi (which emerged as the third largest party in the assembly elections) as they both drew a blank.
The ruling DMK has trounced the opposition AIADMK in the 27,003 positions that were filled in the elections for which counting began on October 12.
TVMI members have won in all the nine newly carved districts -- Kanchipuram, Chengalpattu, Kallakurichi, Villupuram, Ranipet, Tirupattur, Tenkasi and Tirunelveli -- where two-phase elections were conducted on October 6 and 9.
N Anand, the general secretary of AITVMI, said that the 115 seats they won included the post of a panchayat president in Vannur union in Villupuram district by one of their women candidates, Savithri.
Vijay is the president of the AITVMI which was founded about 25 years ago and all of the actor’s fan clubs come under the umbrella association which has more than 1 million members, he added.
Anand, known more by his prefix ‘Bussy’, was a former MLA from the Bussy constituency in neighbouring Puducherry where he belonged to the All India NR Congress which is currently ruling the union territory.
Though the fans contested as independent candidates, actor Vijay allowed them to use his picture and the AITVMI flag during the campaign.
This election performance is also surprising in part because there has been no announcements, campaigns from the actor even as he moved court against his parents seeking a bar on them from launching anything political by using his name. In September Vijay filed a petition in a Chennai city court against his father and film director, S A Chandrasekhar, and mother Shoba Sekar for trying to register an outfit, Vijay Makkal Iyakkam, with the Election Commission of India. He issued a public statement that he had no links with this outfit in November 2020 and he went to court this September seeking a restraint against them from conducting meetings or carrying out other activities in his name.
In Tamil Nadu, which has pioneered for generations of silver screen idols to switch over to politics successfully, Vijay’s place has been widely anticipated. In chronological order, MG Ramachandran was able to straddle both films and politics as he remained chief minister until his death while his contemporary Sivaji Ganesan was a failure in politics. In contemporary times, while Kamal Haasan has been contesting elections since 2019, his peer Rajinikanth after several fits and starts backtracked from floating a party just ahead of the April 6 assembly elections. Vijay is often pitted against actor Ajith Kumar and the latter has also issued a public statement that he will always steer clear of politics. Another actor who tasted early success emerging as an alternative to the Dravidian parties but lost his way is Vijayakanth whose party, Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam, was the second largest in the 2011 elections but won just one seat in the rural local polls. “Our time will come. Until then work tirelessly,” he told his party cadre in a statement on Thursday.
Vijay, like his predecessors MGR and Rajinikanth, enjoys a mass appeal particularly among young men in Tamil Nadu and the neighbouring state of Kerala.
Vijay has been thorny for the BJP because of his film dialogues against the BJP-led union government’s introduction of GST. State BJP leaders targeted him for being a Christian and in a couple of years I-T sleuths raided premises linked to him which his supporters called political vendetta as the searches didn’t find anything significant.
On the day of assembly elections, Vijay cycled to his polling booth which was read as him protesting the high fuel prices although the actor distanced himself from that speculation.
“The rural youngsters consider Vijay as a crusader,” says political analyst Maalan Narayanan. “It’s history repeating itself. Before the 2011 assembly elections, Vijayakanth also asked his fan club members to contest in the rural local body polls even before forming his political party and they did well. Similarly, for Vijay, the idea is to test the waters ahead of the bigger elections.”
