Party will decide on my candidature for Lok Sabha Polls: Kamal Haasan

Actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan put the onus on his party, Maakkal Needhi Maiam, to decide on whether he should contest in the forthcoming Parliamentary Elections, a position he revealed while speaking to the press at the inauguration of a new party office in Pollachi, Coimbatore district, Tamil Nadu.

The Makkal Needhi Maiam core committee had met late in December to decide that decision of whom to ally with in the elections is a decision left to Haasan. An election committee, headed by Vice-President R Mahendran, will select candidates for 40 constituencies.

Queried today on whether he would contest, Haasan said: “That is a decision to be taken by the party. The party will analyse if the situation is conducive for our participation; we cannot hurry into it,” he said.


Haasan’s political intentions became clear around the time Chennai played host to one of the largest demonstrations in the country in December 2016 – the Jallikattu protests. Haasan had been actively Tweeting since then, about various issues in people’s interests. Begun in February last year, the party has opened its second office in Pollachi, with plans to have two more offices in the near term in Trichy, for Central Tamil Nadu, and Thoothukudi for the East. Haasan called it decentralisation, to enable the cadre to access the party in more avenues than one.

On alliances, Haasan had originally said he would be interested in allying with the Indian National Congress should the national party decide to disengage with the current partner DMK. Sources within Makkal Needhi Maiam had said the party has been consistent in its stand that it will not get on the wagon of any alliance that has any of the two large Dravidian parties, the AIADMK and the DMK.