Actor and DMDK Founder Vijayakanth passes away in Chennai's MIOT Hospital

Actor-politician and founder of the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK), Vijayakanth (also known as Narayanan Vijayaraj Alagarswami), passed away at MIOT Hospital in Chennai on Thursday.

The hospital said in a statement that the 71-year-old actor was on ventilator support following his admission for pneumonia. "Captain Vijayakanth was on ventilatory support following his admission for pneumonia. Despite the best efforts of the medical staff he passed away in the morning on 28th December 2023," the hospital said.

Due to his portrayal of military characters, Vijayakanth was popularly known as 'Captain'. His followers also used to call him Karuppu MGR (Black MGR), owing to his generosity, from the 1980s, through his fan body called the Tamil Nadu Vijayakant Thalaimai Rasigar Mandram.

His generosity was quite evident during the peak of Covid in 2020 when some people refused to allow the burial of a doctor in Chennai, and Vijayakanth stepped in and offered part of the land on the premises of his college (Shri Andal Alagar College of Engineering founded in 2001) for the burial of COVID-19 victims.

Political Innings

Vijayakanth started his political party in September 2005 and in Assembly Elections 2006, he won around 8.4 per cent of the total vote share in the state with the party chief winning from Virudhachalam constituency. While DMDK failed to win in the 2009 General Elections, it contested in alliance with the left and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), and won its record number of seats.

The party won 29 out of the 40 seats that it contested and got the opposition status in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly by making it the second largest party in the legislative assembly, next only to its ally AIADMK, pushing DMK to the third spot. Vijayakanth became and remained the leader of the opposition until 2016. As the party broke ties with AIADMK, it resulted in the bulk resignation of DMDK Legislative Assembly members. Vijayakanth had been ill for the past four to five years and his wife Premalatha formally took charge of the party on December 14.

Early life as an actor

He was called Vijayaraj by his family and was born in Madurai in 1952. After completing class 10, he started supervising work at his father’s rice mill. He shifted to Chennai in the 1970s with a dream of acting in films. In 1979, he debuted as a villain with a new name Vijayakanth in Inikkum Ilamai. However, the film flopped.

One of the major game changers in his life was the movie Sattam Oru Iruttarai in 1981, directed by SA Chandrasekhar. It was after his 100th film Captain Prabhakaran (1991), that fans started calling him Captain.