KV Vijay Damu, 46, is one of the 107 victorious Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) MLAs. He won from Royapuram assembly seat in north Chennai defeating senior AIADMK leader and sitting MLA, D Jayakumar and DMK’s A Subair Khan. But before he entered politics, Vijay Damu was the North Chennai district secretary of Vijay Makkal Iyakkam (Vijay Fan Club). His name was different.
“I have added his name Vijay before my name Damu,” the first-time MLA said proudly, adding that his entire family loves “Thalapathy” (leader), as Vijay is popularly called.
As secretary of the fan club, Damu was given the task of turning the Vijay Makkal Iyakkam (VMI) into a grassroots movement by highlighting the lapses of the ruling DMK and the opposition AIADMK, and focusing on Vijay’s own promises.
Thanks to VMI and people like Damu, TVK, which launched in early 2024, has found it easy to build membership — and easily identify candidates.
According to TVK leaders, VMI had 15 million members and almost all of them were registered as party members when TVK was introduced. “In fact, 40% of our candidates are from VMI and another 20% are those recommended by local units, which were previously fan clubs,” said a senior party leader, requesting anonymity. The remaining candidates are turncoat politicians, senior leaders like KA Sengottaiyan (former AIADMK MLA) and VS Babu (former Kolathur constituency MLA) and professionals attracted by TVK’s promise of clean governance.
Like many TVK candidates, Damo, an automobile consultant, was a novice in electoral politics. But he said this is an advantage because people are tired of politicians.
Damo won with 59,091 votes. He defeated DMK’s A Subair Khan by 14,249 votes.
VMI’s 15 million members came from some 85,000 local and regional fan clubs of the kind for which Tamil Nadu had become famous. Such clubs blossomed into a state-wide network in the 1980s and 1990s, with actor Rajnikant being the largest. Since then, every major actor in the state has such clubs. Originally, they only celebrated films featuring their hero; But gradually, many of them turned into community, social and political organizations.
“Most of the fan clubs have been providing social services for a long time and reaching out to people on behalf of Vijay,” the aforementioned senior party leader added.
“Fan clubs ensured that Vijay’s political message reached every home.” It helps that “the average age of our staff is less than 40 years.”
A second leader told TVK that many fan club members are very popular among people in their area, which is one of the reasons why so many of them were chosen as candidates.
Better yet, most fan clubs are organized in the same way as political parties.
A third leader explained to TVK that VMI has wings that cater to different audiences such as youth, women and the elderly, and also a separate IT wing to maintain the actor’s image on social media. “We had a structure and we turned it into a party after some training and restructuring,” a third TVK leader said.
Rajasekar who is the headquarters secretary of Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam was in charge of IT of the fan club and digitized the party membership.
Among the party’s upper echelons are political strategists like N Anand (also known as “Pussy” Anand), a former MLA in the Puducherry Assembly.
Former Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer KG Arunraj, the party’s general secretary for publicity and policy, worked on the party’s manifesto which promised financial relief to various sections.
Other prominent leaders of the party include P Venkataramanan, party treasurer, who won by 70,070 votes from Mylapore constituency defeating DMK’s Velu.Dha by 28,972 votes. Professional political strategist John Aruksamy, who has worked with major political parties in Tamil Nadu, was an advisor to Vijay.
The party also had its share of apostates. CTR Nirmal Kumar, who is currently deputy general secretary, headed the IT wing of the BJP in the state before joining TVK. Nanjil Sampath, a veteran orator, was previously with both the DMK and AIADMK. and nine-time MLA KA Sengottaiyan whose association with the AIADMK goes back to the MG Ramachandran era.
But the party’s success was built on VMI’s candidates. Like M Arul Prakasam, 44, another DSG won from Siddapet. He was a nationwide fan club coordinator. And R Sabarainathan, 30, president of the youth wing of the fan club, and son of Vijay’s driver C Rajendran who won from Chennai’s Virgambakkam constituency. “Thalpathy used to pay my fees from my kindergarten days until my college. He took care of me.”
Damu said they all objected because Vijay asked them. “Our only dream was to make him prime minister. It has become a reality today.”
