New political parties join the mix every day. But do they affect polls?
India Today
Vijay launched the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam in 2024 and will contest the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections. But will he make a difference?
Tamil Nadu’s ever-growing list of political parties will see yet another addition. Popular actor C Joseph Vijay, better known as Thalapathy Vijay, launched the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) in 2024 and will contest the 2026 Assembly elections, due in a few months. He has positioned himself as a challenger to the dominance of the two major Dravidian parties, the DMK and the AIADMK.
Vijay, who has been a staple of Tamil cinema for three decades now, has chosen to walk away from the entertainment business to full-time politics. And maybe this move was foreshadowed by his film career.
According to a BBC analysis, he began his career playing romantic leads in the 1990s, transitioned to angry young man roles in the 2000s, and portrayed himself as a saviour figure in films released after 2012. Perhaps the latter was carefully calibrated to prime his audience for his new journey.
Recent electoral history shows that new political players have struggled to challenge entrenched parties. In Tamil Nadu, for instance, a record 106 parties contested the 2021 Assembly elections, but only eight managed to secure representation.
This difference was even starker in 2016, when 88 parties entered the fray and just four won seats. Despite the multiplicity of candidates, victory margins exceeded 5,000 votes in as many as 195 of the state’s 234 Assembly constituencies in 2021.
While only a handful of parties win seats in Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, the number of parties contesting polls has only surged in recent years. In 2006, 36 parties contested the elections. By 2021, that number had risen to 106, excluding independents. As a result, the average number of candidates per constituency increased from 12 in 2006 to 17 in 2021.
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