WHAT SWUNG THE VOTE IN...

Dhrubo Jyoti decodes how four big states in the south and east of the country voted in a landmark set of assembly elections

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Tamil Nadu

The last time a film talisman whipped up an electoral storm in Tamil Nadu, one out of two people in India lived below the poverty line, cable television and mobile phones were still two decades away, and the white Ambassador ruled the roads. Life veered between careful rationings of oil and rice, the ration card carried like a prayer, the negotiations with a kerosene lamp when the electricity cut out every evening like clockwork. Indira Gandhi had just been voted out in a landslide.

That year, in 1977, Maruthur Gopalan Ramachandran swept to power in his electoral debut, carried to power by an extraordinary coalition comprising women, young people and the poor. He would not lose another election in his lifetime.

Never since that fateful election has a debut been as momentous in the southern state as that of Joseph Vijay Chandrasekhar, whose rookie outfit Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam emerged as a dark horse in the Tamil Nadu assembly elections on Monday within touching distance of power. The 51-year-old actor has done what Captain Vijayakanth couldn't do, what screen legend Rajinikanth hoped to do but never tried, and what the venerated Kamal Haasan failed to do. Using his larger-than-life image, his grassroots network of film clubs, and his cult status among the young, Vijay has successfully broken the Dravidian duopoly that held for half a century. He could become the first chief minister to not belong to either the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam or the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam since Tamil Nadu was formed in 1967.

How did he manage the impossible especially for an outfit that was launched just in February 2024, and was mired in the tragic deaths of 41 people in a party rally just months before the elections.