TVK’s ‘Vijay’ ends Dravidian duopoly, rejects old political formulas in Tamil Nadu

The Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), the nascent one-man regional party founded by the matinee idol Vijay, is the biggest surprise of the Tamil Nadu election results. Surpassing expectations, it has beaten the two principal Dravidian parties—DMK and AIADMK—to emerge No.1 but it may fall short of the majority mark.

For the ruling DMK, the crushing defeat would be difficult to stomach. Apocryphal story has it that the rivalry started in the film arena with Vijay’s films being blocked by Udayanidhi Stalin, the Deputy Chief Minister and son of Chief Minister MK Stalin. The TVK was officially founded by Vijay on February 2, 2024. Whether it was to get his back at the younger Stalin or to oust the alleged corrupt DMK government will always remain a subject of debate, those in the know aver that both the factors weighed in when the TVK was formed.

Whatever the motive, the youth of the state, always under the thrall of matinee idols, attended the fledgling party’s rallies in droves, especially in the run-up to the elections, even without the usual bait of liquor and biryani. The youth set store by someone without baggage but with verve to deliver. Vijay capitalised on this expectation, promising a clean government and employment sans freebies. For good measure, his film background and gimmicks helped. In short, the concoction of novelty, the baggage-less political debut and weariness with traditional Dravidian politics was too heady to be resisted by the youth of Tamil Nadu, who account for a hefty 20.7 per cent of the electorate.

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But then it would be simplistic to attribute Vijay’s Vijay just to youth support. For having bagged 48 per cent of the vote share, women and others too must have intuitively supported him. There were murmurs even among the supposed intelligentsia that the two Dravidian parties had all along been given a long rope and it was time to vote for an untested quantity.

Tamil Nadu results will have a chastening effect across the country — freebies alone do not guarantee win. And competitive freebies are worse. There is a view that Nitish Kumar and NDA won the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections on the back of a Rs 10,000 payout to women of the state. Ditto for the earlier NDA win in Maharashtra and Haryana. While the truth is always difficult to discern and separate from myth, the TN electorate, especially its youth, must be commended for contemptuously rejecting the blandishments in expectation of clean and efficient governance instead. It has also sent an equally chilling message — family rule and perpetuation of dynasties can be counterproductive. Both are sobering messages that are likely to resonate across the nation.

In neighbouring Kerala, the UDF led by Congress is assured of ousting the ruling LDF, incidentally a constituent of the I.N.D.I. alliance at the national level. The Congress always savours more a win against its arch-rival, the BJP. Nevertheless, there is no way the importance of its victory can be minimised as its political dominance is by and large confined to a couple of southern states. The volume of corruption charges levelled against the Left government was tremendous, unusual for a Left government.

The LDF had only one leader, Pinarayi Vijayan, the Chief Minister of Kerala, a prominent CPI(M) leader who served as the 12th Chief Minister of Kerala for two consecutive terms (2016-2021 and 2021-2026), becoming the first Kerala CM to be re-elected after a full five-year term. His juggernaut has now been stopped by the Congress. The vote, however, has been negative or an angry vote, i.e. against the LDF rather than in favour of UDF, read Congress. That said, victory is a victory, though a consolation prize, as it were, for the floundering Congress party.

(The writer is a senior columnist. He tweets @smurlidharan. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)