TVK vs DMK battle lines drawn: From Cauvery Delta, Vijay launches direct attack on CM Stalin

A week after his maiden rally in Trichy turned out to be a success, Vijay’s second leg of campaign in the Cauvery Delta region in South Tamil Nadu on Saturday was an outcry against the DMK. 

Having arrived at Trichy airport in a special flight, Vijay travelled by road on a specially designed bus to Nagapattinam and Thiruvarur as his supporters thronged sidewalks, rooftops and road dividers. 

As the chanting of 'Thalapathy' reverberated in the air, Vijay sharpened his attack on the ruling DMK, in a bid to capture power in 2026. 

The actor-turned politician chose the Cauvery Delta to launch the second round of his campaign ‘Unga Vijay Naa Varen’ (Your Vijay, I am coming). Clad in his usual khaki colour trousers and white shirt, Vijay climbed atop the bus near Anna statue at Puthur in Nagapattinam. As the crowd cheered, Vijay held two microphones in his hand to ensure that his speech reached everyone in the gathering. 

In Trichy, the first point of the campaign on September 13, Vijay had to change three microphones as the speakers did not work and the audio was interrupted. 

“How are you all? Have you all eaten?” Vijay asked the crowd. 

With emotions running high, Vijay fired salvos at the DMK, saying, “In Ariyalur, when I started speaking, they snapped the power. In Trichy, they cut the wires to the speaker. CM sir! I am asking you— if an RSS leader, Modiji or the Union Home Minister comes here, will you dare to cut power like that? Try doing that. Your basement will shake. Isn’t it?,” He asked, insinuating that the DMK and the BJP are secret friends.

In the Cauvery Delta, known to be the fiefdom of the AIADMK and the DMK, the 50-year-old actor started his speech hailing the local Hindu deities and also the most popular Velankanni Basilica shrine. Be it in Tiruchi or in Nagapattinam or Thiruvarur, Vijay clearly chose to mention the names of the local deities and the shrines in the region, only to drive home the point that he is secular and caste neutral—neither anti-Hindu nor just in favour of the minorities as propagated by the BJP.  

In the past decade, the anti-BJP sentiments have deepened in the state, and any party aligning with or being friends with the BJP has been decimated in elections. Vijay seems to have chosen to attack both the BJP and the DMK, saying that the two have a tacit understanding. 

In Nagapattinam and Thiruvarur, Vijay targeted the ruling DMK on the fishermen issue, while reminding the people of his earlier activism in 2014, as an actor.

“This is not the first time I have talked about the fishermen's problems. When our fishermen are attacked, they are called Tamil fishermen. But if the fishermen from the other parts are attacked, they are called Indian fishermen. Our politicians only write letters in the name of saving the fishermen. We should find a solution to this,” Vijay said.

Vijay took on Stalin over his recent foreign tours to attract investments. “Is it an investment from foreign countries in Tamil Nadu or your family's investment in foreign countries?” Vijay asked. 

As the crowd cheered, Vijay again took to hitting the DMK with the dynastic politics rhetoric. He contrasted the arrogance of dynastic politics with a humble, hard-earned actor-politician like him. “If someone like you, who keeps ideology as a banner and is using the family to loot the state, has so much arrogance, imagine how much arrogance a person like me, who worked hard and earned money, will have.”

Wherever he campaigns, Vijay always seeks to make an emotional connection with the crowd, telling them "Kekkala" (can't hear you) and "sathama" (be loud)—the two popular dialogues from his film Bigil.

Vijay's campaign at Nagapattinam and Thiruvarur, the home district of Stalin and once the constituency of DMK patriarch M. Karunanidhi, has drawn clear battle lines between the DMK and the TVK. 

“This war bugle is not going to let you sleep. Victory is for sure,” Vijay roared as he tried to position his TVK as the one and only opponent of the DMK.