Vijay’s TVK boycotts Erode East bypoll; two-corner battle between DMK, NTK

Chennai: New political entrant actor Vijay announced on Friday that his party, Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK) will neither contest in the assembly by-election to Erode East, scheduled to be held on February 5, nor support others. The development came days after Tamil Nadu’s opposition parties All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) boycotted the bypoll.

Since the 1990s, bypolls in Tamil Nadu have been won only by the ruling party. This bypoll will see a two-corner fight between the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and S Seeman’s Tamil nationalist party, Naam Tamizhar Katchi (NTK).

“History shows that the ruling parties win the bypolls in the state by flouting norms in an anti-democratic manner,” said TVK’s general secretary N Anand in a statement. The fledgling party reiterated that its sole focus is the next assembly elections slated to be held in for 2026, aiming to unseat the Dravidian major.

The bypoll was was necessitated after its ally Congress’ sitting MLA EVKS Elangovan died last December. Filing of nominations for the bypoll ended on Friday.

The DMK’s bypoll candidate is former MLA VC Chandrakumar and he has already begun campaigning on the plank of welfare schemes rolled out by the four-year-old DMK government. NTK has fielded the party’s women wing state coordinator, MK Seethalakshmi, who after her nomination asked chief minister MK Stalin not to woo voters with “freebies”.

Tamil Nadu’s main opposition AIADMK and its ally DMDK announced their boycott last Saturday saying that the ruling party would use its money and muscle power and it would be an unfair election, a section within the opposition wanted to test its strength. AIADMK had also boycotted last year’s bypoll in Vikravandi citing the same reason. The consecutive losses for AIADMK in this seat is a setback for general secretary and leader of opposition Edappadi Palaniswami (EPS) as he is touted to be dominant in the state’s western region, which includes Erode district.

A day leader, BJP state president K Annamalai also announced that the NDA will boycott the bypoll citing the same reason as the AIADMK vowed to eliminate the DMK in 2026 assembly elections. Incidentally, the AIADMK that was part of the NDA in 2022 had fielded its nominee in that year’s bypoll to Erode East seat but lost to Congress’ Elangovan, who faced the election following the death of his son and local MLA E Thirumahan Everaa.