Chennai:
Legendary actor and politician Kamal Haasan is set to become a Rajya Sabha MP. The MK Stalin-led DMK today released a list of Rajya Sabha candidates. While the party has chosen P Wilson for a second term, R Sivalingam and Rokiah Malik are the other candidates. One of the seats in DMK’s quota has been set aside for Kamal Haasan’s Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) in return for his support to the DMK in the 2024 general election.
The MNM had backed the DMK-Congress alliance in Tamil Nadu for the 2024 election. The alliance swept all 39 parliamentary seats in Tamil Nadu. DMK sources have said party chief and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin promised Kamal Haasan a Rajya Sabha seat in return for his support.
Six Rajya Sabha seats from Tamil Nadu will be vacant this month and the election to fill them will be held on June 19. Currently, three of them are held by the DMK, one by the AIADMK, one by PMK leader Anbumani Ramadoss and one by MDMK’s Vaiko.
Tamil Nadu Minister PK Sekar Babu met Kamal Haasan at his residence recently and conveyed Mr Stalin’s support. Today the MNM executive meet adopted a resolution, naming its leader as its Rajya Sabha face.
MNM was founded by Kamal Haasan and launched in Madurai in 2018 as a party advocating transparency, governance reforms, and regional cooperation. The thousand rupees monthly assistance for women the ruling DMK has implemented was originally announced by the MNM as a policy.
In the 2019 general election, MNM secured 3.72 per cent vote share in the seats it contested. The party contested the 2021 Tamil Nadu polls solo but drew a blank. In the 2021 election, Kamal Haasan lost the Coimbatore South seat to BJP’s Vanathi Srinivasan by a slim margin. The party suffered another setback in the 2022 urban local body polls, when it contested 140 seats but did not win any.
