Actor Vijayakanth, also known as Narayanan Vijayaraj Alagarswami, once emerged as a strong political challenged to both Tamil Nadu’s regional giants — AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa and DMK president M Karunanidhi.
According to a report in The Federal, Vijayakanth shook the AIADMK and DMK out of their slumber when his party — Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) — secured 8.38 per cent votes contesting on its strength in 2006, and 10.3 per cent in the ensuing Lok Sabha elections.
Although his party won only one seat in 2006, and nil seats in 2009, he was considered a major force, and a serious challenger to the throne, the report stated.
The AIADMK believed that it could not register wins in the 2006 and 2009 polls due to the DMDK factor.
If buzz in the local political circles are to be believed, Jayalalithaa’s confidante and aide, VK Sasikala, and editor of Tughlaq magazine, Cho Ramaswamy, persuaded the former CM — despite her hostility towards Vijayakanth — to strike an alliance between the two parties in 2011.
And thus, Vijayakanth became the ‘Captain’ of the political ship, proving that he was the deciding factor in Tamil Nadu politics. His party then won 29 of the 41 seats it contested as part of the AIADMK-led alliance and helped Jayalalithaa’s party crush the DMK.
The uneasy truce between Jayalalithaa and Vijayakanth ended as the DMDK MLAs, when they took up various issues in the Tamil Nadu Assembly, were heckled and abused, The Federal stated.
A 2012 report in Times of India mentioned that there were verbal duels and stormy bouts between the AIADMK and the DMDK, including former allies Jayalalithaa and then Leader of the Opposition Vijayakanth.
While Vijayakanth told Jayalalithaa that her party would not have come to power in the state without the help of his party, Jayalalithaa slammed her former electoral partner saying she was never interested in teaming up with his party, implying that she was forced to do so by her associates, TOI had stated.
The Federal stated that the animosity was such that at one time, the AIADMK government had filed over 40 defamation cases against Vijayakanth. But the Supreme Court later quashed them and criticised the AIADMK government for filing defamation cases that did not hold water.
On the personal front, Vijayakanth married Premalatha on January 31, 1990, and has two sons — Shanmuga Pandian and Vijay Prabhakar.
Like his father, Shanmuga is also an actor and has starred in Sagaptham (2015) and Madura Veeran (2018).
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