Tamil Nadu Assembly Elections 2026 | Vijay demolishes DMK's Chennai citadel in electoral debut

The 32 seats the TVK secured not only pivoted the party to Fort St. George, the seat of power for the Tamil Nadu government, but also helped demolish DMK’s fortress.

Chennai: Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) President C Joseph Vijay choosing to contest from Perambur here was considered a “strategic move” aimed at achieving a “ripple effect” across the Greater Chennai region. That strategy yielded spectacular results for the TVK with the party winning 32 of the total 37 seats in Kanchipuram, Tiruvallur, Chengalpattu, and Chennai (KTCC) districts.

The 32 seats the TVK secured not only pivoted the party to Fort St. George, the seat of power for the Tamil Nadu government, but also helped demolish the DMK’s fortress. In the 2021 elections, the DMK won 36 of the 37 seats leaving only one to the AIADMK.

Chennai has been a DMK bastion ever since the 1950s, which even the legendary M G Ramachandran could not break in his lifetime.

It took about two decades for his predecessor J Jayalalithaa to effectively make inroads into the bastion; she won half of the 14 city seats in 2006 and made the fort crumble in 2011 by leading the AIADMK to victory in 14 of the 16 seats. But she couldn’t sustain the momentum as she lost 10 of the 16 seats to the DMK in 2016 despite contesting from here.

But for Vijay, it took only one election. TVK won 14 of the 16 seats in Chennai, nine of the 10 seats in Tiruvallur, five of the seven seats in Chengalpattu, and all four seats in Kanchipuram. DMK won two seats in Chennai and drew a blank in the remaining three districts, while the AIADMK won one in Tiruvallur and two in Chengalpattu.

Not just this, the Vijay tsunami swamped the DMK’s bastion of Kolathur, where incumbent Chief Minister M K Stalin himself lost.

Vijay contesting from Chennai, the outgoing DMK regime not concentrating enough on urban infrastructure—including laying interior roads and preparing the city for monsoon—and the collapse of the AIADMK made things easy for TVK. Unlike previous DMK regimes, the 2021-2026 tenure lacked flyovers and other urban infrastructure to boast of. The under-construction metro project also caused severe inconvenience as authorities used that as an excuse not to repair damaged roads.

Overwhelming support for Vijay and his TVK could be witnessed across the city, especially in north Chennai, where a sizeable chunk are lower middle class and poor.

Not just Chennai and neighbouring districts, the whistle sound was heard quite loud in urban pockets across the state. The TVK won six of the nine seats in Tiruchirapalli – Vijay had chosen Tiruchi (east) as his secondary seat – six of the 10 seats in Coimbatore, and eight of the 10 seats in Madurai.

Over half of the 108 seats the TVK won came from cities and suburban areas, the rural population in many parts of the state also voted for the two-year-old party. However, the DMK did well in the Cauvery Delta region.

Prof Ramu Manivannan, former professor, Department of Politics and Public Administration, told DHthat a lack of freshness in candidates coupled with the Vijay wave led to the DMK losing urban seats.

“TVK is a major factor along with fatigue with the Dravidian parties. General arrogance of the DMK’s power structure at the district level also led to the loss. I don’t believe people vote on infrastructural shortage,” Manivannan said.