Kamal Haasan announced MNM candidate for Rajya Sabha; to be elected unopposed

The governing council and administrative committee of the MNM, in a meeting here, passed a resolution naming party chief Haasan as its candidate to the Upper House and formally requested support from allies.

Chennai: Seven years after he launched Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) with much fanfare, film icon Kamal Haasan will enter the Rajya Sabha this July with his election now certain, given the DMK-led Secular Progressive Alliance’s strength of 159 MLAs in a house of 234.

Moments after the DMK allotted one of the four seats it can win from the six that go to biennial polls on June 19 to MNM, the party declared Kamal Haasan as the candidate.

Kamal’s short political life has come a full circle – he joined SPA in 2024 after successive electoral defeats with his party struggling to take on the Dravidian giants, DMK and AIADMK, against whom it was launched in 2018, over a year after AIADMK’s J Jayalalithaa passed away and DMK’s M Karunanidhi was confined to his home. With this, the Tamil Brahmin community will get a representation in Parliament after many decades.

“I feel happy that Kamal sir’s voice will be heard in Rajya Sabha,” deputy chief minister and DMK youth wing chief Udhayanidhi Stalin said.

Kamal Haasan began warming up to the DMK and Congress after he participated in Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo yatra in December 2022 and campaigned for the Congress in Erode (east) bye-elections in February 2023. He was promised a Rajya Sabha seat by the DMK in 2024.

DMK also announced three candidates by renominating P Wilson, the face behind Tamil Nadu government’s victory against Governor R N Ravi in the Supreme Court, and nominating Salma, a poet and activist known in literary circles, and S R Sivalingam from western Tamil Nadu, where the DMK is still weak organisationally.

The party didn’t renominate Vaiko, M Shanmugam, and M M Abdulla and it is sure to win all four seats, including that of Kamal’s, given its strength of 159. Sources in the DMK told DH that Abdulla wasn’t renominated due to his interest in contesting the 2026 assembly elections and Salma got the seat.

“We were keen that Abdulla should be replaced by a Muslim. DMK is a party that has been giving representation to Muslims, and Salma’s nomination was done keeping in mind the 2026 elections. We want the minorities to vote en masse for the DMK like they voted in the 2019, 2021 and 2024 polls,” a DMK leader said.

Meanwhile, the opposition AIADMK said its general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami will hold consultations with party leaders on the Rajya Sabha election candidates. The party is likely to contest both seats which it can win with support from allies like BJP.