Tamil superstar Kamal Haasan to contest Lok Sabha polls

Chennai, Feb 15( IANS) Tamil Superstar Kamal Haasan, who is also President of Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM), will be contesting the upcoming Lok Sabha polls either from Coimbatore or Chennai.

Kamal Haasan‘s political party, MNM has recently being sanctioned with the symbol of a battery torch. The veteran superstar who involved himself for the cause of the downtrodden has already entered an electoral alliance with the ruling DMK and will be part of the I.N.D.I.A bloc for the 2024 general elections.

Coimbatore seat is currently represented by CPI-M, while Chennai North, South and Central seats were represented by Dr Kalanidhi Veeraswamy, Dr Thamizhachi Thangapandian and Dayanidhi Maran respectively. All three are from the DMK.

For the veteran actor contesting from Coimbatore, a seat of the alliance partner CPI-M, the DMK will require several rounds of discussions with the CPI-M leadership as also with other coalition partners but if the seat is either Chennai (North, Central or South), it can easily allocate the seat from its own kitty. While the three Chennai seats are represented by the DMK, all three are heavy weight candidates from known political families of DMK. While Dayanidhi Maran (Chennai Central MP) is the cousin of party supremo and Chief Minister, M.K. Stalin,Dr Kalanidhi Veeraswamy (Chennai North MP) is the son of former minister and powerful leader Arcot N.Veeraswami. The DMK MP from Chennai South is Dr Thamizachi Thangapandian whose father was a former MLA and brother is Tamil Nadu‘s minister Thangam Thenarasu.

However, Kamal Haasan has an advantage in Coimbatore as he had contested the 2021 assembly elections from Coimbatore South, losing it by a slender margin of 1,540 votes to the BJP Women's wing leader, Vanathi Sreenivasan. It may be recalled that in the 2019 general elections, Kamal Haasan’s MNM candidate, Dr R. Mahendran stood third in Coimbatore Lok Sabha seat, polling 1,45,104 votes with a vote share of 11.6 per cent of the total votes polled.

BJP candidate, C.P. Radhakrishnan who is presently the Governor of Jharkhand had come second in this seat garnering, 3,92,007 votes with 31.34 per cent vote share.

CPI-M leader P.R. Natarajan who won the elections, had polled, 5,77,150 votes at a vote share of 45.66 per cent. If Kamal Haasan contests from Coimbatore as a candidate of the DMK front, he can easily win, given the volume of votes polled by the

DMK front and the votes received by the MNM candidate, Dr.R.Mahendran. It remains, however, to be seen whether the CPI-M will agree to shift from Coimbatore which is one of the two seats the party won from Tamil Nadu-the other being Madurai.

While Kamal Haasan‘s first choice is Coimbatore, he, according to sources close to him, does not mind contesting Lok Sabha elections from either of

Chennai North, South or Central constituencies.

With the DMK led I.N.D.I.A front at an advantage in Tamil Nadu, it has to be seen from where Kamal Haasan, one of the top most actors of Tamil Nadu,

will ultimately contest polls.