On January 25, inside a crowded conference hall at Mahabalipuram on the outskirts of Chennai, actor Vijay declared that "neither the evil force nor the corrupt force should rule the state”. Addressing his party functionaries, Vijay sounded categorical about the Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam’s (TVK) stand against the ruling DMK and the opposition AIADMK.
For the first time since the launch of his party in 2024, the actor-politician spoke critically of the AIADMK, referring to it as the party which ruled Tamil Nadu earlier, and called it a “corrupt force”.
The Mahabalipuram meeting was the last nail in the coffin—putting an end to all the speculations about Vijay’s TVK aligning with the AIADMK. The actor also called his party a powerful force that was capable of winning the upcoming election in the state on its own.
Vijay’s speech invited sharp criticism from the AIADMK, leading to battle lines being drawn amid closely fought elections in the state.
The AIADMK, which had been waiting in the wings by sending feelers to the TVK, brought Vijay into the line of fire with a scathing attack, in which it called him a “narcissist”.
In a social media post written in the form of a letter addressed to the 'Panaiyur Pannaiyar' (landlord of Panaiyur), the AIADMK IT wing questioned his claims of being a clean, non-corrupt individual. Soon, it also unleashed a flurry of memes against Vijay, recalling the days when he called on Edappadi K. Palaniswami to resolve issues affecting the release of his film Master, and how he went (with his father) all the way to the Kodanad estate to call on Jayalalithaa to resolve issues behind the release of Thalaiva.
Even days later, the social media fight between the AIADMK and the TVK has cooked up some of the most interesting memes and videos in the elections.
Interestingly, the T.T.V. Dhinakaran-led Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK) joining the NDA has crushed all the hopes of the TVK. Dhinakaran, who was said to be in talks with the TVK for an alliance after former minister K.A. Sengottaiyan joined the party, has also come out heavily against the TVK. When Vijay called AIADMK a “corrupt party”, Dhinakaran also took a dig at Vijay, saying that he was an actor who could not even control the sale of black tickets for his own movies.
Notably, the AIADMK had given Vijay false hopes after the Karur stampede.
When Palaniswami said at a Namakkal meeting that a “magnificent party” would join the AIADMK-led alliance, pointing out that the TVK flag was being waved there, political observers in the state opined that the AIADMK and the TVK might join forces.
However, those hopes fell flat when Union Minister Piyush Goyal replaced Baijayant Panda as the BJP in-charge for Tamil Nadu to give shape to the fragmented NDA in the state.
The second time everything went haywire for Vijay and his party was when Dhinakaran chose to walk into the NDA fold. TVK had been waiting for senior leaders from the AIADMK and its factions—led by O. Panneerselvam and Dhinakaran—to either join his party or float an alliance with him.
With the AIADMK-led NDA surging in the state after AMMK’s re-entry into the alliance, the anti-incumbency and anti-DMK votes—which had been likely to tilt toward the TVK—now seem to be going back to the AIADMK alliance.
Being a fledgling party, the TVK also doesn’t have any prominent face other than Vijay and Sengottaiyan, as well as a handful of other leaders who are also new to electoral politics. Now, with the AIADMK's fresh salvos against the actor, the TVK has been forced to rework its political strategies.
