Actor and politician Kamal Haasan's Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) on Saturday, March 9, announced its alliance with the Dravida Munetra Kazhagam (DMK) led coalition for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Additionally, one seat for the 2025 Rajya Sabha has been allocated to MNM.
According to the agreement between the two parties, MNM will undertake campaign-related activities across the 40 Lok Sabha constituencies in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. The arrangement was finalised during a meeting between Kamal Haasan and MK Stalin, the President of DMK and the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, at the DMK headquarters in Chennai.
Reportedly, Kamal Haasan wanted to contest from the Coimbatore Lok Sabha constituency under his party’s torchlight symbol, but there was a huge demand for the Coimbatore constituency in the DMK alliance. The Coimbatore Lok Sabha seat was allocated to the CPM in the 2019 elections and this time as well, the CPM wants to contest from Coimbatore. The DMK was also very keen on contesting from the Coimbatore constituency if Tamil Nadu BJP President K Annamalai is fielded from there in the upcoming elections.
TNM was the first media outlet to report about DMK offering a Rajya Sabha seat for MNM Chief Kamal Hasan in its exclusive newsletter Powertrip on March 1.
Kamal Haasan made his electoral debut in the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections held in 2021. He had contested in Coimbatore (South) against BJP’s Vanathi Srinivasan. He lost the seat to his BJP counterpart by a margin of 1540 votes. While Kamal secured 45,042 votes, and Vanathi Srinivasan secured 45,932 votes.