Vijay Likely To Resign From Trichy East, Keep Perambur Seat: Sources

Vijay is likely to resign from the Trichy (East) Assembly seat he won in Monday's Tamil Nadu election, sources told NDTV Tuesday morning. The actor is expected to keep his Perambur seat.

Vijay led his young Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam to a blockbuster win in the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly election, breaking Dravidian giants DMK and AIADMK's 62-year stranglehold on the state government.

In its debut election the TVK swept 108 of the state's 234 seats, leaving 59 for the DMK and 47 for the AIADMK, to all but confirm Vijay as the first cinema-to-politics Tamil Nadu chief minister since J Jayalalithaa in 1991. It now faces the delicate task of post-poll negotiations - options include the Congress, the Left, and the AIADMK - to cross the 118-seat majority mark.

Vijay contested from Trichy (East) and Perambur, and won both.

In Trichy (East) the actor defeated the DMK's Inigo Irudayaraj by 27,416 votes.

In Perambur, he defeated another DMK candidate - RD Shekar - by a massive 53,715 votes.

Both seats offered distinct strategic value for the TVK.

Perambur is in the northern part of Chennai and the DMK - which held that seat from 2019 onwards - was widely seen as having a strong base in urban centres, specifically the capital city.

Contesting from there was widely regarded as a high-risk strategy, but it also offered Vijay the chance to lay down a marker - to tap into and assess the weight his movie star fan following.

The Trichy seat, i.e., the eastern part of the city of Tiruchirappalli, was different.

It was Vijay looking to establish a voter base beyond Chennai, to counter the argument his support is confined to celebrity-friendly pockets.

He ran a high-octane campaign, with rallies cutting through the bustling corridors of the Gandhi Market and the narrow lanes of the Rockfort area and drew large and enthusiastic crowds.

In the end Vijay triumphed from both, handsomely, as did his TVK across the state, boosted in large part by his movie star status, yes, but also by the Tamil voters' increasing disenchantment with the old-world, uber-Dravidian binary of the DMK and AIADMK.

Vijay was a waft of fresh air and they took a deep breath.