Kamal Ghorui
CHENNAI: The 17th Tamil Nadu assembly is set to reflect a greater demographic diversity with 25 people from minority communities, 50 from SC/ST communities, 23 women and two brahmins representatives entering the House. And, TVK has been the catalyst in breaking caste and religious barriers. The party fielded dalit candidates in eight general constituences and four of them won including P Selvam from Virudhunagar and Reddiarpatti V Narayanan from Nanguneri.. The only other dalit candidate who won from a non – reserved seat was Congress nominee P Viswanathan who won from Melur. TVK candidates also won 24 of the 44 reserved seats.Thirteen of the 25 minority community MLAs are from TVK. They include Vijay himself, Marie Wilson from R K Nagar and Thahira from Ranipet. The last assembly had 15 from the minority communities.From other parties, prominent minority representatives include Paul Manoj Pandian and Austin from DMK in southern Tamil Nadu. Two IUML MLAs and M H Jawahirullah and Thamimun Ansari of MMK and MJK respectively, who contested on DMK’s rising sun symbol from Nagapattinam and Chidambaram, are among eight muslims in the new assembly.
In the NDA, there are no Muslim MLAs. Leema Rose Martin from Lalgudi will be the lone Christian MLA in the alliance.TVK’s candidate selection did not follow the traditional wisdom of the dravidian majors and other parties of fielding people belonging to the majority caste or religion in a constituency. Instead, TVK alloted seats to former Vijay fan club members who had worked in the Vijay Makkal Iyakkam and to recent entrants to the party based on an assessment of the winnability and party work.“This victory of TVK has shattered the age-old practice of selecting candidates based on caste, as well as the notion that only those with financial power can contest elections,” said filmmaker Pa Ranjith, who has been a prominent Dalit voice in the state. Dalits contesting and winning from general constituencies remains rare in Tamil Nadu politics. Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi has been among the few parties to field dalit candidates consistently in general constituencies. In 2026 too, VCK fielded Paneer Dhas in Thiruporur. Former chief minister J Jayalalithaa earlier fielded dalit candidates such as Dalit Ezhilmalai from Trichy and T Dhansingh from Pallavaram. However, DMK has largely avoided such experiments in recent years.VCK MP D Ravikumar said TVK could claim that it was empowering dalits only if the party openly acknowledged that it had intentionally fielded dalit candidates. “Now, it appears that some of the candidates happened to be dalits by chance. That alone cannot be termed empowerment,” he said.In contrast, political analyst D Rajmurugan said, “TVK broke caste barriers not only in victories but also in candidate selection.” He said TVK has not only fielded eight dalit candidates in general constituencies, the party has made 17 dalits as its district secretaries. The new assembly will also see the return of brahmin representation after a gap of 10 years. There was no brahmin MLA in the House since 2016, when former Chennai police commissioner R Natraj and Jayalalithaa were elected. In the present Assembly, P Venkatramanan from Mylapore and Ramesh from Srirangam have won on behalf of TVK.
