Home News From Illegal Mining Barons To Cash-For-Votes Distributers: TVK Is Not Thooya Sakthi...

From Illegal Mining Barons To Cash-For-Votes Distributers: TVK Is Not Thooya Sakthi But The Same Old Dravidianist Rotten Wine In A New Bottle

By
The Commune
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Vijay sold voters a promise of clean politics and honest governance, but scratch the surface, you find that TVK is like any other party that the people did not want in power.

A little scrutiny around some TVK winners already shows how fragile that moral claim is. The available public record shows a gap between the party’s ethical branding and the questions now hanging over a few of the people elevated to office.

The Promise and the Problem

TVK’s rise was built in part on the idea that Vijay represented a break from the corrupt style of Tamil Nadu politics. That image matters because when a party asks the public to trust its moral intent, the backgrounds, disclosures, and associations of its elected MLAs become part of the test.

And people are not just making allegations. There is publicly available information that explains why the criticism is growing by the day. Just as the TVK emerged as the single largest party, news of their members caught for sexual assault of minor, kidnapping and theft, assault and extortion, cheating are hitting the headlines. If this is the case, what is the difference that Vijay promised?

Now let us take a look at a few candidates, their affidavits and the allegations.

Auto Driver With Luxury Car Royapuram MLA

One of TVK’s most marketable stories was the rise of K.V. Vijay Damu, celebrated as an “ex-auto driver” who defeated heavyweight rivals in Royapuram. But news reports indicate that the same MLA does not own an auto and instead owns an Innova Crysta, undercutting the simplicity of the narrative that helped sell him to voters. If one thought he purchased the vehicles with a loan, no, the affidavit does not show a debt even.

His affidavit on Myneta identifies him as the TVK candidate from Royapuram, lists his profession as “Auto Consulting Business,” and shows total assets of roughly Rs 28.86 lakh.

He also has 4 criminal cases on himself. Well, owning a luxury vehicle does not by itself establish wrongdoing, but it does show that the public-relations image surrounding him deserves far more scrutiny than the slogan-driven storytelling it received during the campaign.

Illegal Quarrying Tirunelveli MLA

The more serious concern comes from Tirunelveli – R.S. Murugan, a TVK MLA publicly linked by anti-corruption campaigners to quarry-related allegations. Jayaram Venkatesan of Arappor stated that a quarry run in the name of Murugan’s wife, Sindhu, was accused of illegal quarrying of 96,000 cubic metres of rough stone, with a reported penalty of Rs 5.7 crore cited from an official report.

This is not an isolated backdrop. The New Indian Express reported in February 2024 that Arappor Iyakkam alleged illegal quarrying in Tirunelveli caused a loss of over Rs 700 crore to the state exchequer, and later political demands for action drew on the same complaint. Even if individual legal liability must still be separated from broader district-level allegations, the optics are devastating for any party that claims to be ushering in cleaner politics.

The Humble Driver Who Became The Benami?

One of the most popular personal background stories of the TVK candidates was that of Vijay’s former driver Rajendran’s son getting a ticket.

Now one would think this was very magnanimous of Vijay to recognise the driver’s services. But company filings tell a very different story. Rajendran, presented publicly as merely a driver, appears in Ministry of Corporate Affairs records as a director and shareholder in Vijay-linked firm Jaya Nagar Properties alongside Joseph Vijay and Sangeetha Vijay.

These documents show Rajendran featuring not as an employee but as part of the ownership and management structure of Vijay-linked entities. Sources point out that he also appears as a shareholder in other Vijay-associated companies, though the extent of his role in various private trusts is unclear.

This undercuts the popular social media claim that Vijay has “elevated a mere driver” into politics. At the very least, Rajendran has been positioned as a business associate in formal records.

Clean Politics Needs Cleaner Candidates

There is another irony here. Vijay himself is known for evading taxes – be it his Rolls Royce Ghost car or admitting to taking payment in cash for the film Puli and then filing petitions in the court so that IT department do not charge him the tax?

The Rolls-Royce Ghost

Vijay imported a Rolls-Royce Ghost from England. When the state levied entry tax on the vehicle, he refused to pay and challenged it in court. He dragged the litigation for years. In July 2021, the Madras High Court dismissed his petition and imposed a ₹1 lakh fine, directed to the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s Covid-19 Public Relief Fund.

The court’s words bear repeating verbatim: “Tax evasion is to be construed as an anti-national habit, attitude and mindset, and unconstitutional.”

The court further stated that a reputed film actor whom fans look up to as a “real hero” is expected to pay taxes promptly and punctually – “he cannot be a mere reel-life hero.”

The Hidden Income and the ₹1.5 Crore Penalty

On 30 September 2015, Income Tax Department officers conducted a search at Vijay’s residence. What investigators found was that nearly ₹5 crore paid to him in cash as part of his remuneration for the film Puli had not been disclosed in his original tax returns.

Only after the IT department’s search, not voluntarily, not out of conscience, did Vijay file a revised return on 29 July 2016, declaring total income of ₹35.42 crore, now incorporating what had previously been concealed.

The Income Tax Department correctly treated this as a non-voluntary disclosure meaning it was triggered by a search, not by Vijay’s own initiative, and imposed a penalty of ₹1.5 crore under Section 271AAB(1) of the Income Tax Act.

Did Vijay pay and move on? No. He challenged the penalty in the Madras High Court. He fought it for years. Then, on 5 February 2026, just seven weeks before he filed his nomination as Tamil Nadu’s anti-corruption candidate, the Madras High Court dismissed his appeal in its entirety and upheld the full ₹1.5 crore penalty.

If Vijay wants TVK to remain more than a mood, a fandom, or a protest vehicle, he has to do what Tamil Nadu’s major parties have long avoided: subject his own MLAs and associates to the same ruthless transparency he promised the system. Otherwise, “clean politics” will start to look like a campaign costume – useful on stage, but quickly discarded once power is won, and it will only prove that TVK is another DMK.

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