Actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan recently announced that he had formed an alliance with DMK and would not be contesting for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. He will now be campaigning for the DMK for the elections and has an assured seat in the Rajya Sabha in 2025.
Kamal Haasan launched his party Makkal Needhi Maiam (Centre for People’s Justice) in 2018 with an aim to bring in honest politics in Tamil Nadu. At that time, he declared that he didn’t like BJP’s right-wing politics and also indicated that he considered both the Dravidian parties – the DMK and the AIADMK as “corrupt”. However, five years later he has joined hands with the DMK whom he once labelled ‘corrupt’. In 2021, Kamal Haasan had stated that both the DMK and AIADMK are now ‘support worthy’. In response, Udhayanidhi Stalin had retorted, “I don’t want to comment on Kamal Haasan. We don’t take him seriously.”
On Marcy 9, Kamal Haasan put out a video about this decision to join the DMK stating that he was willing to sacrifice “little differences” with the DMK and he was willing to sit with the Opposition for the sake of the “nation’s welfare”. This decision has upset many of his party cadres and his political opponents have also lashed out at him at this U-turn.
Speaking to the media in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu BJP state president K Annamalai said, “Politics is a tough job and having principles in politics is even more difficult. Unable to cope with this, Kamal Haasan has joined the DMK alliance. He has cheated his supporters who trusted him. It is painful that he is going to Parliament on a Rajya Sabha seat offered by the DMK.”
Kamal Haasan was also trolled on social media by many who called him out for joining a party he himself had called corrupt earlier. One user on X (formerly Twitter) called the Tamil star an ‘opportunist and hypocrite’, while another wrote, “#MakkalNeedhiMaiam was founded with promises of change, but it seems to have become a tool for personal gains”. In fact, AIADMK’s Edappadi Palaniswami had said a while back that he didn’t “consider Kamal Haasan a politician; he changes colour faster than a chameleon”.
According to the understanding with the DMK now, MNM will do campaign-related work in the 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu and for the single Puducherry seat also.
In 2019, MNM had faced the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and the 2021 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections but didn’t win any seats.