Actor Vijay's Party Wins Tamil Nadu Election, And His Driver's Son Too

Actor Vijay's Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam secured a historic win in the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly election Monday, breaking the entrenched Dravidian binary stretching back nearly six decades and confirming 'thalapathy' - 'commander' in Tamil - as the next big cinema-politics crossover.

The TVK is on course to win well over 100 seats in the 234-member Assembly. And one of those seats - Virugampakkam, which falls within the Chennai Lok Sabha constituency - will be held by R Sabarinathan.

But who is R Sabarinathan? He is the 30-year-old son of Vijay's driver and will follow the actor in making history in Tamil Nadu politics, adding his name to a list of incoming TVK MLAs with debut election wins.

And he beat out the DMK's Prabhakara Raja and the AIADMK's Virugai Ravi - who won the seat in 2021 and 2016 respectively - by over 22,000 votes.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Tamil Nadu high-profile DMK leaders fell by the dozens as the ruling party slipped to an embarrassing defeat. The list of names beaten included the biggest of all - Chief Minister MK Stalin, who was dumped out of his Kolathur stronghold by the TVK's VS Babu.

However Stalin's son, Udhayanidhi Stalin, fared better; he saw off the challenge from another TVK leader - Selvam D - to retain his Chepauk-Thiruvallikeni seat by 7,140 votes.

As for Vijay, the likely incoming Chief Minister, he enjoyed a hat-trick of wins today - his TVK swept the state and he won from Perambur (beating the DMK's RD Shekar by nearly 50,000 votes) and Tiruchirappalli (East) (beating the DMK's S Irudayaraj by around 23,000 votes).

With the counting nearing its end, and increasingly pointing to a mega win for the TVK, the focus will now shift to government formation. Vijay's party is likely to fall tantalisingly short of the 118-seat majority mark, meaning it will need support from other parties to cross that line.

Who that support will come from - the Congress, the AIADMK, or a combination of regional parties - will form the big narrative from the state over the next few days.