Tamil star ‘Thalapathy’ Vijay is all set to register his yet to be named political party with the Election Commission of India in the first week of February. Vijay will be the latest addition to Tamil Nadu’s long list of actors turned politicians.
Sources close to the actor said that his fan club Thalapathy Vijay Makkal Iyakkam (TVMI) will be converted into a political party and registered with the ECI. A long list of names for the party is being discussed by his well-wishers and fans.
Sources said Vijay’s party will be working along the same lines of the two Dravidian majors—the DMK and the AIADMK—talking Dravidian politics and ideologies of Periyar and Annadurai. With the registration of the party, the stage will be set for the actor’s political debut in the 2026 assembly elections.
The administrative work of the registration process has already begun. Members of TVMI met at the actor’s office in Panaiyur on the outskirts of Chennai on January 25 and elected Vijay as the president of the association. The meeting which went on for three hours, in the presence of Vijay, elected other office bearers also.
“The general council gave its approval to the bylaws of the yet to be named political party to be registered with ECI,” said an insider.
Though Vijay plans to take the electoral plunge only in 2026, the registration is scheduled to happen before the Lok Sabha polls due in April-May as the ECI had tweaked the rules for allocation of symbols to the registered unrecognised political parties. Also the office bearers of TVMI and Vijay’s well wishers feel that the ECI rules may get diluted further if the BJP returns to power after the Lok Sabha polls. The ECI has made it mandatory for the registered unrecognised political parties to furnish audited accounts of the last three financial years.
The other reason for the actor to gear up for the registration process is the increasing pressure from the BJP which is keen to make inroads in Tamil Nadu. Sources say the BJP doesn’t want Vijay to emerge as a competitor for its state president K. Annamalai.
“Vijay has been facing lots of external challenges even before his entry,” say sources close to him.
With the registration of the political party, Vijay will join the long list of actor turned politicians in the state after M.G. Ramachandran, Shivaji Ganesan, Jayalalithaa, Vijayakanth and Kamal Hassan. Known to be a man of few words, in contrast to his on-screen persona, Vijay feels that he can prove to be successful like MGR and Jayalalithaa. The 49 -year-old actor is one of the most popular stars from Tamil Nadu with a strong fan base across the state in all age groups unlike Rajinikanth or Kamal Hassan or Naam Tamilar founder leader Seeman.
