After more than five decades in the AIADMK, K A Sengottaiyan was expelled from the party last month. Now, the 77-year-old is poised to take a political leap that would have been unthinkable only a year ago.
If sources in actor Vijay’s party Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) are to be believed, Sengottaiyan is set to join them at a party event on Thursday. If it happens, it will be the first major induction of a senior Dravidian leader into the fledgling political outfit, a sort of generational handshake between Tamil Nadu’s ageing Dravidian establishment and its newest political experiment.
TVK insiders confirmed that Sengottaiyan was scheduled to meet Vijay on Wednesday to finalise his entry. According to party insiders, key leaders John Arockiaswamy and Aadhav Arjun met Sengottaiyan last weekend to complete the groundwork for his induction. The Indian Express reached out to the veteran leader, but he was not available for a comment.
Despite pulling crowds to its events based on Vijay’s star power, the TVK lacks other leaders capable of independently securing 20,000 to 30,000 votes in an Assembly constituency, and its on-ground political capital remains thin. In that context, Sengottaiyan still retains an uncontested personal vote base in his home turf of Gobichettipalayam in Erode district. If the TVK fields him from there, he instantly becomes the party’s second “assured” Assembly seat after Vijay himself in a party powered by fan enthusiasm rather than local political machinery.
Sengottaiyan’s likely entry also complicates the previously ambiguous relationship between the TVK and the AIADMK. Vijay has consistently attacked both the BJP and the DMK, but avoided directly confronting the AIADMK, whose icons — from C N Annadurai to M G Ramachandran (MGR) to Jayalalithaa — he often invokes in his speeches. Sengottaiyan’s crossover alters that equilibrium, effectively shutting the door on a scenario that had quietly troubled the DMK: a potential TVK–AIADMK alliance that could have potentially disrupted the electoral landscape. If Sengottaiyan joins the fledgling outfit, the DMK gains an unexpected reprieve, while the AIADMK faces the prospect of its older guard drifting into a rival party led by the state’s biggest contemporary celebrity.
“After his revolt, attempts backed by a senior BJP Union minister and an RSS ideologue that failed to create any impact in AIADMK, TVK approached Sengottaiyan,” said a senior leader from Vijay’s party, which does not have a conventional second or third-rung leadership. “For the TVK, Sengottaiyan is going to be the first veteran face.”
This is a significant moment for Sengottaiayan as well since AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami has organised a public meeting in Gobichettipalayam on the same day. TVK sources said YouTuber Felix Gerald, a controversial figure and a former Puducherry BJP MLA might also join the party in Vijay’s presence.
Ignored, then expelled
For over four decades, Sengottaiyan represented the Erode region in the Assembly, serving under MGR, Jayalalithaa, and Palaniswami. Fiercely loyal to the AIADMK founder’s legacy and one of Jayalalithaa’s earliest confidants, he was a minister, including education, transport, and agriculture, multiple times and earned a reputation as a disciplined organiser who kept his factional allegiances muted through the AIADMK’s turbulent years. He was also seen as a loyalist of Jayalalithaa’s close aide V K Sasikala.
However, Sengottaiyan’s political weight has long since diminished, with his influence confined to Gobichettipalayam. When he issued a 10-day ultimatum in September demanding reconciliation among warring AIADMK factions, it barely drew a response, illustrating that his name did not hold the sway in the party’s current power calculus like before.
“He was respected as a senior, not feared as a force,” said a senior AIADMK functionary, recalling how EPS opted to ignore rather than confront him at first. “The thinking was simple: let him talk, it won’t echo beyond Gobichettipalayam.”
That patience began to fray when Sengottaiyan travelled to Delhi to meet BJP leaders and sought an RSS ideologue’s advice in a bid to find leverage in the party. The effort, AIADMK insiders said, was quietly encouraged by a Union Minister from Tamil Nadu who sought to broker a rapprochement between the rebel AIADMK factions. But the move backfired.
Palaniswami, aware that the BJP had lost its footing within the AIADMK after the Lok Sabha drubbing, chose to wait it out. The Delhi meetings yielded no promises, no protection, and no audience to Sengottaiyan. He returned home politically isolated, his gambit having exposed the lack of his reach.
By late October, he joined hands with expelled AIADMK leaders O Panneerselvam, Sasikala, and T T V Dhinakaran at the Thevar Jayanthi event in Ramanathapuram, where the trio vowed to “end the DMK regime” and “restore Amma’s governance”. The optics forced Palaniswami’s hand. On October 31, the AIADMK leader expelled Sengottaiyan for “engaging with expelled persons” and “acting in a manner detrimental to the party’s integrity”.
“It was an action the AIADMK didn’t want to take. But it became unavoidable after the Ramanathapuram event,” said a senior leader.
In the end, the veteran leader was neither part of any rebel grouping nor did he maintain contact with the cadre. Like Panneerselvam and Jayalalithaa’s niece Deepa Jayakumar, he became another veteran left stranded by miscalculations and misplaced faith in the RSS-Delhi channels.
By November, the state BJP stopped making overtures, viewing Sengottaiyan’s cause as a lost one. But for TVK, according to a senior spokesperson, Sengottaiyan’s availability was an opportunity “to project maturity and signal inclusiveness without inheriting factional baggage”.
A TVK leader said the former AIADMK leader could play the role that Panruti Ramachandran, the octogenarian Dravidian statesman, played for Captain Vijayakanth during the launch of the DMDK in 2005. “Sengottaiyan will be Vijay’s Panruti, not for electoral muscle, but for legitimacy and validation,” said a TVK strategist.
Within the AIADMK, Sengottaiyan’s exit has not elicited much response. Many see it as a natural conclusion to a drawn-out episode that never threatened Palaniswami’s authority. “He has been irrelevant for years. The expulsion only formalised what was already true,” said a party district secretary from western Tamil Nadu.
If Sengottaiyan walks onto the TVK stage on Thursday, he will be flanked by a movie icon about half his age, who may provide him with yet another chance in a long and chequered career to leave a mark on Tamil Nadu politics.
