Tamil Nadu elections: Vijay’s fan army turns into winning machine

E-PaperSubscribeSubscribeEnjoy unlimited accessSubscribe Now! Get features like K V Vijay Damu, 46, is one of the 107 victorious Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) MLAs . He won from Royapuram assembly seat in North Chennai defeating AIADMK’s senior leader and sitting MLA, D Jayakumar and DMK’s A Subair Khan. But before he entered politics Vijay Damu was the North Chennai district secretary of the Vijay Makkal Iyakkam (Vijay Fan Club). And his name was different. TVK chief and Tiruchirappalli East constituency candidate Vijay. (PTI)“I added his name Vijay ahead of my name Damu,” the first time MLA proudly said, adding that his entire family loves their “Thalapathy” (Commander), as Vijay is popularly called. As secretary of the fan club, Damu was given a task for converting Vijay Makkal Iyakkam (VMI) into a people’s movement by highlighting lapses of the ruling DMK and opposition AIADMK, and focussing on Vijay’s own promises. Thanks to VMI and people like Damu, TVK, launched in early 2024 found it easy to build membership -- and easily identify candidates. According to TVK leaders, VMI had 15 million members and almost all of them enrolled as party members when TVK was floated . “In fact, 40% of our candidates are from VMI and another 20% are those recommended by local units, which were earlier fan clubs,” a senior party leader said, asking not to be identified. The remaining candidates are political turncoats, senior leaders such as K A Sengottaiyan (former AIADMK MLA) and V S Babu (former MLA Kolathur constituency) and professionals attracted by TVK’s promise of clean governance. Like many TVK candidates, Damu, an automobile consultant, was a newbie to electoral politics. But he said this was an advantage as people were fed up with politicians. Damu won by securing 59,091 votes. He defeated DMK’s A Subair Khan by a margin of 14,249 votes. VMI’s 15 million members came from around 85,000 local and regional fan clubs of the sort that Tamil Nadu has become popular for. Such clubs blossomed into a state-wide network in the 1980s and 1990s, with actor Rajnikant having the biggest one. Since then, every big actor in the state has had such clubs. Originally, they just celebrated films featuring their hero; but gradually, many morphed into community, social, and political organisations. “Most of the fan clubs have been doing social service for a long time and connected with people on behalf of Vijay,” the senior party leader cited above added. “The fan clubs ensured that Vijay’s political message reached every home ”. It helped that the “average age of our cadre is less than 40 years.” A second TVK leader said that many members of the fan clubs were popular with people in their neighbourhood, one reason why so many of them were picked as candidates. Even better, most fan clubs are structured the same way as political parties. A third TVK leader explained that VMI had wings catering to different audiences such as young people, women and elderly people, and also a separate IT wing to maintain the actor’s image on social media. “We had a structure and we converted that into a party after some training and restructuring,” a third TVK leader said. A Rajasekar who is headquarter secretary of Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam was in charge of Information Technology at the fan club and digitised the party’s memberships. Among the top rung of the party are political strategists such as N Anand also called as ‘Bussy’ Anand, a former MLA in Puducherry assembly. Former Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer, K G Arunraj, party general secretary of propaganda and policy, worked on the party manifesto which promised financial doles to different sections. Other prominent leaders of the party include P Venkataramanan, party treasurer, who won by 70,070 votes from Mylapore constituency defeating DMK’s Velu.Dha by 28,972 votes. Professional political strategist John Arokiyasamy, who has worked with major political parties in Tamil Nadu, was advisor to Vijay. The party also had its share of turncoats. CTR Nirmal Kumar who is currently the deputy general secretary, headed the IT wing of Bharatiya Janata Party in the state before joining TVK. Nanjil Sampath, a veteran orator, was earlier with both DMK and AIADMK . And nine-time MLA K A Sengottaiyan whose association with the AIADMKdates baco to the M G Ramachandran era . But the party’s success was built around VMI candidates. Like M Arul Prakasam, 44, another deputy general secretary who won from Saidapet . He was a state-level co-ordinator of the fan club. And R Sabarainathan, 30, the head of the fan club’s youth wing, and the son of Vijay’s driver C Rajendran who won from Chennai’s Virgambakkam constituency. “Thalapathi has been paying the fees for me from my kindergarten days to my college . He has been taking care of me.” Damu said all of them contested because Vijay asked them. “Our only dream was to make him the chief minister. It is coming true today.”