As Tamil Nadu gears up for the 2026 assembly elections, Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) candidates across the state are fighting a lonely battle – armed not with their party founder’s presence, but with life-size cardboard cutouts and hired lookalikes of actor-turned-politician C. Joseph Vijay.
On 6 April 2026, TVK’s Tiruverumbur candidate Navalpattu S. Viji alias Vijayakumar paraded a cardboard cutout of Vijay through streets in Tiruchi district to drum up voter support.
For a party contesting its very first assembly election, this is not the optics its candidates would have hoped for.
The crisis deepened further in Kolathur, where TVK’s candidate VS Babu is taking on none other than DMK chief MK Stalin himself – arguably one of the most high-stakes constituency battle in the state.
In a contest demanding maximum firepower, TVK deployed a Vijay lookalike to stand beside their candidate during canvassing.
நேந்து பொம்மைய வச்சு பிரச்சாரம் இன்னைக்கு லோ பட்ஜெட் விஜய் வச்சு பிரச்சாரம் 👌🔥 pic.twitter.com/66MiOZgxkK
— பாக்டீரியா (@Bacteria_Offl) April 7, 2026
The spectacle drew ridicule rather than reverence. While lookalikes are a supplementary cultural fixture for established parties: AIADMK uses Jayalalithaa and MGR stand-ins, DMK invokes Karunanidhi’s image – those parties have decades of organisational muscle to fall back on. TVK does not. For a first-time electoral outfit riding entirely on Vijay’s star power, a lookalike is not a bonus; it is an admission of failure.
Vijay, meanwhile, has canvassed in fewer than ten constituencies statewide, offering vague excuses of scheduling conflicts and security concerns. These explanations ring hollow when grassroots candidates are knocking on doors daily, trusting that the star who inspired them would show up. He has not.
A party built on one man’s celebrity, now substituting that man with cardboard and impostors, signals a fundamental disconnect between TVK’s leadership and its ground reality. Candidates sweat it out in the April heat while their founder remains conspicuously absent, detached from the very voters he asked to believe in him.
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