Vijaykant ploughs a lonely furrow

By IANS,

Chennai : Actor turned politician Vijaykant is beating a solo path with his DMDK party in these Lok Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu, saying his only alliances are with god and people.


Support TwoCircles

After getting 8.3 percent of the vote in the 2006 assembly elections, Vijaykant, 56, became the most sought after politician in the state as the parliamentary polls neared.

But once seat sharing talks with both the DMK-Congress alliance and AIADMK broke down, he decided to go it alone.

Neither of the two main contending forces was willing to give DMDK the 10 Lok Sabha seats it wanted.

“Our party will increase its vote share to 20 percent in this election,” K. Pandiarajan, DMDK’s Virudhunagar candidate, told IANS.

The politician who is said to fear Vijaykant most is AIADMK chief and former chief minister J. Jayalalitha because he is contesting her claim to be the political heir to AIADMK founder M.G. Ramachandran or MGR.

A politician of a leading party told IANS: “Vijaykant is attracting MGR’s vote base – Dalits, youth and the middle class.”

Added a Congress politician: “Today the middle class is divided among the DMK, Congress and AIADMK while the Scheduled Castes in rural areas seem to support Vijaykant.”

SUPPORT TWOCIRCLES HELP SUPPORT INDEPENDENT AND NON-PROFIT MEDIA. DONATE HERE