Chennai: Veteran Tamil film actor Kamal Haasan is set to enter the Rajya Sabha in late July, seven years after he founded the Makkal Needhi Maiam (People’s Justice Centre), a centrist political party, which failed to capture the imagination of the voters of Tamil Nadu.
Haasan, whose next film Thug Life, helmed by the ace director Manirathnam is due for release next month, will get elected to the Rajya Sabha though his party does not have a single legislator in the Tamil Nadu Assembly. All thanks to an electoral pact he signed with the ruling DMK during last year’s Lok Sabha polls where he undertook to campaign for the DMK-led INDIA bloc without fielding any candidate in return for a Rajya Sabha berth.
On Wednesday, the Makkal Needhi Maiam’s executive committee met and completed the formality of proposing Haasan’s candidature for the Rajya Sabha on behalf of the party.
Such a scenario is not new to Tamil Nadu as a few years ago, G K Vasan, who revived his father G K Moopanar’s Tamil Maanila Congress (M), MDMK leader Vaiko, and PMK leader Anbumani Ramadoss had got elected to the Rajya Sabha with support from either of the two Dravidian majors – AIADMK and DMK – though they did not have any representation then in the Assembly.
Vaiko, whose term in the Upper House is set to end on July 24, will now make a quiet exit after the DMK chose not to back him for another term. However, his son Durai Vaiko was elected to the Lok Sabha in 2024 as part of the DMK-led alliance.
The DMK has renominated sitting MP P Wilson, a senior advocate, who had been instrumental in the M K Stalin Government scoring some big legal victories in the Supreme Court and Madras High Court in recent years. The party also fielded Rokaiya Malik alias Salma, a Tamil poet, who owes her initial entry into the party in the early part of the Millennium to Kanimozhi Karunanidhi, now the DMK Parliamentary Party leader. It has given the third seat to former two-term MLA S R Sivalingam, who hails from Salem district, the native of Edappadi K Palaniswami, the Leader of Opposition and AIADMK general secretary.
On July 26, six seats are falling vacant in the Raja Sabha from Tamil Nadu’s quota of 18. Given that each candidate needs the support of 34 legislators, the DMK can successfully field four candidates. The AIADMK can field two candidates with the support of the BJP’s four MLAs. However, it remains to be seen if the party would give one seat to PMK’s Anbumani, whose term is set to end now, or back two of its own candidates.
