Actor Joseph Vijay finally took his leap into politics by formally announcing his new party Tamizhaga Vettri Kazhagam. Assuming he will not backtrack like Actor Rajinikanth did after dragging his feet for so many years and giving hope to the people of Tamil Nadu, Vijay will work very seriously in establishing his party organization for the next two years to be ready for the fight in 2026.
If we have to go with pure logic and if Vijay is serious in building his party to be a power to reckon with in Tamil Nadu in the future, he will have to take on the DMK and the issues he probably will raise are rampant corruption, poor administration, lack of good education, lack of real social justice and so on. The fact that he has named his party as a Kazhagam gives us a hint that he will also play the Dravida politics but with a modern tinge to it that youth will relate to. Consequently, he has to attack the DMK in which case he will have to share the political space with Annamalai’s BJP and AIADMK. The DMK will then have three rivals to deal with instead of just the one earlier which was the AIADMK. This will be very uphill task for the DMK which will be at that time mostly be led by the younger scion of their family, Udhayanidhi Stalin, going by the way he is already being projected as a Deputy CM probable. If Vijay like the other small parties like Kamal Haasan’s, ties up with the DMK, his party will be limited to a 4 seat party throughout which I don’t think he has entered for politics for. Therefore, it is a 90% probability that he will be an opponent to the DMK in the 2026 elections.
Going with the above inference, the two youngsters, Annamalai and Vijay will capture lot of the public mind space running up to 2026. Both will represent a change in the Tamil Nadu politics which Tamil Nadu people have been longing for so many years. Annmalai will represent double engine Sarkar led by Narendra Modi who is all set to come back as PM in 2024. He will also work towards Hindu consolidation, corruption-less clean politics, exponential development of Tamil Nadu, nationalism (desiyam). Minorities especially the Muslims and Christians will still shy away from BJP. A part of the DMK Christian votebank will not mind moving towards Vijay who will represent progressive and youthful Dravidam and AIADMK will eat into a part of the DMK’s Muslim vote bank. My guess is all these parties will not come together before the 2026 elections as they will all be most effective that way and based on results can come together post polls to form the government. Based on these dynamics, it is clear that the DMK’s chances to form a government in 2026 look bleak given Tamil Nadu already seeing a strong anti-incumbency as accepted by even some DMK leaning political analysts in around 3 years of the DMK rule.
If the Tamil Nadu youth has to choose between Annamalai, Vijay and Udhayanidhi they will most probably go for the former two as Udhayanidhi will find it very hard to shrug off his dynastic politics image in their eyes as well as he will not look that formidable pitted against Annamalai who has already proved his intellectual strength through his excellent oratory skills and has already captured the imagination of lot of the youth in Tamil Ndu and pitted against Vijay’s superstar image which the youth love. It is going to be tough times for Udhayanidhi running up to 2026 unless he comes up with something really different and eye catching. They don’t also have a Prashant Kishor now top help them as he has moved out of his political strategist work and is fighting his own battle in Bihar. Given these circumstances, the DMK might dump Congress and try wooing BJP but I don’t think BJP should tie up with DMK in which case all the hard work that Annamalai and team have put in so far will go down the drain.
I would like to reiterate that all the above are just my personal views on how the scenarios might look like with Vijay’s advent to politics. Whatever, I mentioned above might not even happen at all as in politics any unimaginable thing can happen and no one can predict for sure. However, one thing I can tell for sure is that Tamil Nadu will see drastic political changes in 2026. Annamalai and Vijay will be the disruptors and will shape the future politics of Tamil Nadu. Tamizhagam will emerge as the eventual winner and will prosper which is what nation loving people like me are excited about.
Jai Hind and Jai Shri Ram!
Ananth Mahadevan is a political commentator based in Bengaluru.
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