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Kamal Haasan all set to enter Rajya Sabha with support from ally DMK
The DMK-led coalition, the Secular Progressive Alliance (SPA) in Tamil Nadu has a strength of 159 legislative members in the 234 member assembly
Actor Kamal Haasan, 70, of the Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM), is all set to enter Rajya Sabha, courtesy the party’s ally and Tamil Nadu’s ruling party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.
The DMK on Wednesday announced candidates for the June 19 biennial election to the Rajya Sabha by renominating senior advocate P Wilson and nominating party members Salma, (a poet) and S R Sivalingam (a former minister), chief minister and DMK president M K Stalin said in a statement.
The fourth seat was allocated to Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) as agreed during last year’s Lok Sabha elections. MNM chief and actor Kamal Haasan will be the nominee, MNM said in a statement.
The DMK-led coalition, the Secular Progressive Alliance (SPA) in Tamil Nadu has a strength of 159 legislative members in the 234 member assembly. To secure a Rajya Sabha seat, a nominee requires 34 votes. On basis of its numerical strength in the assembly, the DMK will win four of the six seats for which election is scheduled on June 19, which makes Kamal Haasan’s entry into the upper house a certainty.
The actor was promised the seat after MNM joined the DMK-led in Tamil Nadu in March 2024 ahead of the Lok Sabha elections and he campaigned for the INDIA bloc of opposition parties. Wilson is the DMK’s legal eagle who spearheaded several cases in the Madras HC and Supreme Court including arguing in the case against TN governor R N Ravi ‘s attempt to delay bills that led the top court to pronounce a landmark verdict on April 8 setting timelines for governors and the President of India to act on state bills.
The opposition AIADMK led by Edappadi Palaniswami has 62 MLAs and is expected to announce two candidates with the support of the BJP which has four MLAs. The AIADMK and BJP patched up in April to fight the 2026 assembly elections together after splitting for 19 months, although it wasn’t immediately clear whether K Annamalai, the BJP’s former state chief, and the man widely considered responsible for the break-up between it and the AIADMK will be one of the nominees.
The term of the six current sitting members in the Upper House ends in June. They are M M Abdullah (DMK), N Chandrasegharan (AIADMK), Anbumani Ramadoss (PMK, an ally of NDA), M Shanmugam (DMK), Vaiko (MDMK, an ally of DMK) and Wilson (DMK).
Haasan is embroiled in a language controversy after he said that “Kannada is born out of Tamil” at an audio launch in Chennai of his latest film -Mani Rathnam’s ‘Thug Life’ which is co-produced by Red Giant Movies- which is headed by Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin. “Kannada has a long-standing history,” Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah said, according to ANI. “Poor Kamal Haasan, he is unaware of it.”
Following Haasan’s nomination, Stalin’s son and Tamil Nadu deputy CM Udhayanidhi Stalin posted on X, “...Kamal sir’s voice will be heard for the rights of Tamil Nadu and to protect India’s Constitution and the country’s diversity.”
Reacting to the language controversy, Haasan said, “Politicians including me do not know enough to talk about language. Let’s leave that to the historians, archaeologists and language experts.” He said his remark was made out of love while speaking to Kannada actor Shivanna. On his RS nomination, Haasan commented in Malayalam. “Your (people’s) voice will be heard whether it is Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada or Telugu or Hindi. People’s voice matter, not language.”
Formed in 2018, MNM contested the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and the 2021 Tamil Nadu elections on its own but drew a blank in both electoral contests. Haasan promised to be an alternative in TN politics but his party won only a 3.7% vote share, predominantly from urban areas, in the 2019 LS polls and its performance further dipped in the 2021 state elections when its vote share slipped to 2.5% . Haasan had also walked alongside former Congress president Rahul Gandhi during his south-to-north Bharat Jodo Yatra in 2022-23.
