What worked for Vijay’s TVK, ended four decades of Dravidian rule

E-PaperSubscribeSubscribeEnjoy unlimited accessSubscribe Now! Get features like When Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam, TVK, won 107 seats in Tamil Nadu on Monday, defeating the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s 74 seats and pushing the AIADMK-led combine to third with 53 seats, it did so in the manner its leader had designed: as a generational verdict against 40 years of Dravidian duopoly, won on a campaign calibrated to the voters the old parties had stopped speaking to. A vendor sells pictures of Indian actor and Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) party president C. Joseph Vijay during vote counting for the Tamil Nadu assembly elections, at the party headquarters in Chennai on May 4 (AFP)The architecture of that campaign rested on five decisions. The first was positioning. Vijay drew a deliberate distinction between his two opponents — declaring the BJP an “ideological opponent” and the DMK a “political opponent known for its corruption and family politics.” The framing allowed him to occupy the space neither party could credibly claim: clean, modern, secular. “He projected himself as an alternate to DMK and AIADMK and voters appear to have accepted that, as he has a clean image and does not carry the corruption baggage of established Dravidian parties,” said political analyst Ramu Manivannan. The second was the candidate slate. Roughly 60% of TVK’s nominees had never contested an election; the majority were aged between 38 and 47, against an AIADMK and DMK field where more than half the candidates carried over 30 years of legislative or local body experience. In the 2021 local body elections, more than 100 members of the Vijay Makkal Iyakkam (VKI) — the progenitor of TVK --- contested as independents and most won, a controlled test that told the party which profiles translated into votes at the constituency level. Party surveys before the 2026 campaign refined the selection further, identifying winnable candidates ward by ward before Vijay formally introduced the full slate of 234 nominees in March. “They are my nominees. You will be voting for me,” he told supporters at the time. The third was the manifesto. Both the target voter groups — youth and women — received specific, quantified promises rather than general commitments. Women were offered what TVK called a “super six”: ₹2,500 per month, six free LPG cylinders and a sovereign coin among the benefits. For youth, the party promised an unemployment allowance and a monthly paid internship for skill training. “His entire campaign was directed at younger voters. One could see a sea of young people at his rallies,” said a second political analyst Ramesh Sethuraman. The fourth was the brand sequence. The party flag — red and yellow with a Vaagai flower motif — was hoisted in August 2024. The tagline adopted from Thirukkural, Pirappokkum Ella Uyirkum (”all are equal by birth”), carried the equity of classical Tamil literature rather than Vijay’s cinematic persona alone. The election symbol, a whistle, was converted into a grassroots exercise — supporters were encouraged to draw it as a kolam at their homes before polling day, pushing visibility into neighbourhoods no campaign vehicle could reach. The fifth was the ground network. TVK entered the election with a cadre already embedded in constituencies — the 85,000-unit VKI fan club. The average age of that cadre, a senior TVK leader said, was under 40. The combination held. In Katpadi, TVK’s M Sudhakar defeated DMK general secretary Durai Murugan, pushing one of the ruling party’s most senior figures to third place with a margin of 7,643 votes. In Madurai Central, a DMK bastion, TVK’s Madhar Badhurudeen defeated former minister Palanivel Thiagarajan by 19,128 votes. Mannivannan said the victory had delivered on Vijay’s self-description. “Through this win, he has proven himself to be a true Jana Nayagan” — the commander of the people — he said, the phrase also the title of Vijay’s latest unreleased film.