India
oi-Sushmita Halder
Actor-turned-politician
Kamal
Haasan
on
Friday
announced
his
plans
to
contest
the
2024
Lok
Sabha
Elections
from
Coimbatore.
He
stated
his
party
intends
to
align
with
the
secular
Progressive
Alliance
led
by
DMK.
Haasan
who
lost
the
2021
Lok
Sabha
elections
from
the
industrial
city
by
a
narrow
margin
expressed
his
desire
to
contest
in
the
elections
during
a
conversation
with
his
party
members.
“When
people
come
to
watch
my
movie
‘Vikram’,
why
won’t
they
come
and
vote
for
me,”
Kamal
was
quoted
as
saying
by
his
party
men.
Indeed,
Coimbatore
was
amongst
the
few
constituencies
where
Makkal
Needhi
Maiam
(MNM)
nominees
garnered
over
100,000
votes
in
the
2019
elections.
R
Mahendran,
who
achieved
145,000
votes
at
that
time,
is
presently
a
DMK
member.
Kamal
Haasan,
who
made
his
political
debut
in
2018,
has
been
gradually
aligning
with
the
Congress
and
DMK.
He
also
participated
in
Rahul
Gandhi’s
Bharat
Jodo
Yatra
and
backed
the
Congress
nominee
in
the
Erode
(east)
by-elections.
In
2019,
MNM
received
almost
4
per
cent
of
the
votes,
but
this
dropped
to
a
mere
2
per
cent
in
2021.
Following
the
election,
there
was
a
string
of
departures
from
the
party,
with
key
members
such
as
former
bureaucrat
Santhosh
Babu,
R
Mahendran,
and
C
K
Kumaravel
exiting
and
attributing
the
loss
to
Haasan.
The
MNM
did
not
perform
well
in
the
municipal
elections,
with
Kamal
Haasan
noticeably
being
absent
from
significant
public
demonstrations
since
then.
Securing
a
place
within
the
DMK
alliance
for
the
2024
Lok
Sabha
elections
may
potentially
boost
the
significance
of
his
party.
Story first published: Friday, September 22, 2023, 22:50 [IST]
