Chennai: Popular actor Vijay, who campaigned for AIADMK in the 2011 Assembly elections has decided to stay away from the coming elections and asked his fan club not to involve themselves in poll campaign this time.
The 42-year-old actor with over 51,600 registered fan clubs having a membership of over 13 lakhs in Tamil Nadu and a few more in Kerala, Malaysia and Singapore, besides thousands of unregistered fan clubs, launched his Vijay People’s Movement on the eve of 2009 Parliamentary elections in Pudukottai.
The actor initially enjoyed good relationship with DMK leaders as his father and film director S.A. Chandrasekar was close to DMK chief M. Karunanidhi and had directed several scripts of the DMK leader.
Actor Vijay’s relationship with DMK turned sour after he apprehended attempts by Karunanidhi’s kin in the film industry to dominate Kollywood and prevent the release of Vijay’s films.
In the 2011 Assembly elections, he openly declared support to AIADMK and his fans worked for the victory of AIADMK alliance. His fans campaigned for AIADMK in 2014 Parliamentary polls too, even though there was no official word from him to support the ruling party.
His film Thuppakki faced trouble in release after Muslim outfits protested against it and later it went on to become the third Tamil film to earn a collection of over one billion after super star Rajnikanth’s Sivaji and Enthiran. His film Thalaiva and later Kaththi too faced opposition and trouble during release time, leading to resentment and frustration among his fans.
Vijay, hailed as “Ilaya Thalapathy’ (young general) by his fans, married Sangeetha, a Sri Lankan Tamil and showed keen interest in politics. He led a fast protesting against the killing of Sri Lankan Tamils in 2009 military offensive against LTTE and demanding ceasefire. He also supported the hunger strike of Anna Hazare against corruption in 2011.
His dialogue in the film Kaththi lashing out at the 2G scam indicated that he continued to be against DMK.
On the eve of 2016 polls, posters highlighting his dialogue on 2G have appeared in several parts of the city with the portrait of AIADMK leader J. Jayalalithaa, leading to speculations that he will support AIADMK again. But, the actor has asked his fans not to involve themselves in election campaign now.
Sources close to Chandrasekar also denied that Vijay’s fans would support any party in the forthcoming Assembly elections. After the flop of his much hyped movie Puli, the actor had decided to concentrate on his next movie Theri and make it a box office hit and not to involve himself in political controversies before its release.
