Among those on the NDA stage, a TN scion now heading a ghost of a party

A Congress veteran, Moopanar had floated the Tamil Maanila Congress in 1996 after parting ways with the Congress, declaring that his new outfit would “uphold the ideology of Kamaraj”. One of the founder leaders of the party was P Chidambaram, who had just ended a run as Union Minister of State, Commerce, in the P V Narasimha Rao government, playing a key role in the liberalisation process. Chidambaram considered Moopanar his mentor in politics.

Despite his long stint in Congress and his new party, Moopanar was a close associate of the late DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, and his party was an ally of the DMK. Both hailed from the Thanjavur region and shared a good rapport. Moopanar was also fond of Karunanidhi’s son and current DMK chief and Tamil Nadu CM Stalin – which held Moopanar’s son Vasan in good stead after the patriarch’s death.

At one of the several public felicitation ceremonies held after Stalin became the first directly elected mayor of Chennai in 1996, Moopanar had grabbed the mike to rhetorically ask the audience why they were congratulating Stalin for a mere mayoral post when bigger accolades awaited him. He went on to wish that Stalin would become a minister, and one day rule the state.

Two years later, in 1998, as the DMK leant towards the BJP, Moopanar – who remained staunchly anti-communal – parted ways with it. As he put it, between communalism and the “corruption” of his next ally, the AIADMK, he considered the former a bigger threat.

Upon Moopanar’s death in 2001, Vasan took charge of the party. In 2002, he merged the Tamil Maanila Congress with the Congress, and went on to hold pivotal positions in the Congress. By 2004, Chidambaram, after a brief experiment with an own party, too returned to the Congress.

One of Vasan’s mentors in Delhi was senior Congress leader and future President of India Pranab Mukherjee, who gave Vasan’s political journey in the Capital a boost. The backing of Mukherjee and other friends of Moopanar helped Vasan secure a Rajya Sabha seat in 2008, backed by Karunanidhi, and the post of Shipping Minister in the UPA-II between 2009 and 2014.

But Vasan’s clout within the Congress began to erode after Mukherjee became the President. By 2014, with the Congress fighting an intense anti-incumbency wave, Vasan chose not to contest the Lok Sabha elections, despite Rahul Gandhi reportedly urging him to. He then broke away from the Congress, and relaunched his father’s party, now as the Tamil Maanila Congress (Moopanar).

In his new role though as head of a party, Vasan proved indecisive, with his political strategies often proving wrong. Many key leaders left his side accusing him of significant aberrations from his father’s political values.

For example, in 2016, he decided to side with the AIADMK in the Assembly polls, despite an invitation sent by Stalin to join the DMK front. When the AIADMK pressed him reportedly to fight on its symbol rather than on his own party’s, Vasan decided to join the ‘Third Front’ in the state, led by Left parties.

But, within a few months, come local body polls, Vasan expressed his interest to get back to the DMK front. However, in one of his last key political decisions, Karunanidhi ruled that parties that hadn’t helped the DMK in the 2016 polls wouldn’t be taken in.

By 2019, Vasan had become a BJP ally, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailing him as one of the few “clean” leaders from Tamil Nadu at poll rallies in the state. Despite this, Vasan could not save his home turf, Thanjavur, and the Tamil Maanila Congress (Moopanar) lost the only seat it contested.

Speculations about a potential merger with the BJP have been around since the end of 2019, following a meeting Vasan held with Modi. In 2021, Vasan’s party got six seats as part of the AIADMK-NDA alliance, but failed to secure any, pushing the party further into decline.

The last few years saw the departure of more supporters like Peter Alphonse from Vasan’s side, while long-time partyman B S Gnanadesikan died during the Covid pandemic.

Today, Vasan heads a party that is largely seen as a one-man show and organises occasional conferences. Further disillusioning Moopanar’s followers, he is now more loyal than the king as he tries to cosy up to the BJP. “He champions the BJP’s causes more vigorously than BJP leaders,” a source pointed out.

One recent incident was the unilateral dismissal of Senthil Balaji, arrested by Central agencies, as minister by Governor R N Ravi – a controversial decision that he later rescinded. Vasan is said to have told his partymen at a closed-door meeting that Ravi’s decision was correct.

The source pointed out that even the state BJP had not backed the Governor on the issue.