Vijay’s TVK makes a go for it alone

The fledgling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), on March 29, 2026, crossed one of the most important stages of the electoral process, by naming candidates for all the 234 Assembly constituencies in the State.

The fledgling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), on March 29, 2026, crossed one of the most important stages of the electoral process, by naming candidates for all the 234 Assembly constituencies in the State.

Ever since the initial excitement about the TVK’s entry into the political scene started evaporating after the Karur stampede that killed 41 persons in September last year, the party’s founder C. Joseph Vijay (Tamil actor known only as Vijay) became a target of attack from his critics. Thanks to his party’s litigation, the stampede case was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) from a Madras High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) and a State-constituted enquiry commission. In two spells spread over two months, Mr. Vijay has faced interrogation by the CBI in New Delhi. Meanwhile, the talk of a decisive shift in the TVK’s stand on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which Mr. Vijay had called all along as the “ideological adversary,” began doing the rounds a day before the actor-turned politician left for New Delhi. Sections of the media frantically reported that a host of district secretaries of the TVK had expressed, at an internal meeting held virtually, their preference for an alliance with the BJP.