Inside ‘Team Vijay’: The strategists, influencers, loyalists, and ex-bureaucrat in Tamil Nadu’s new Cabinet

Tamil Nadu Governor Rajendra Arlekar along with Congress MP and Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi, newly-elected state Chief Minister and Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) chief C Joseph Vijay, Cabinet Ministers and others during the swearing-in ceremony, at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, in Chennai, Sunday (PTI)

Dr K G Arun Raj gives the ministry its technocratic face. A doctor who later joined the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) and served in the Income Tax Department before taking voluntary retirement, Raj became one of TVK’s most recognisable policy and television faces. The DMK’s allegation that he was linked to the 2020 tax raids against Vijay, denied by him and the party, only made him more visible as the system insider who crossed into Vijay’s camp.

K A Sengottaiyan brings what the young party lacks: decades of legislative and ministerial experience in AIADMK, since the MGR era. The former AIADMK veteran, gives Vijay’s Cabinet administrative memory and a link to Tamil Nadu’s older governance culture. In a ministry otherwise filled with first-generation leaders, his presence offers ballast.

P Venkataraman is among Vijay’s long-trusted institutional hands. Known within the Vijay ecosystem as a steady administrator who worked closely with him long before the TVK’s formal launch, he represents continuity between Vijay Makkal Iyakkam – Vijay’s social organisation – and the new government. He is not a mass orator in the Anand mould, but a systems man, the kind charismatic movements need when they move from campaign stages to government files.

R Nirmalkumar, a former BJP digital operator who later moved to the AIADMK before joining the TVK, embodies the party’s post-television politics. His contribution lies in turning fandom into algorithms of building meme networks, WhatsApp chains and online volunteer systems into a disciplined digital campaign force.

Rajmohan Arumugam brings satire, screens and internet-era communication into government. Known through YouTube channel Put Chutney, Tamil Vannakam and his earlier public speaking career, he represents a new Tamil political grammar: less slogan, more meme; less platform speech, more conversational outrage and humour.

Dr T K Prabhu, a dentist-politician from Karaikudi, adds another professional face to the Cabinet. His rise from local organisation to ministerial office shows TVK’s attempt to project educated, managerial credibility beyond cinema charisma.

The youngest and most striking entrant into the Cabinet is S Keerthana. At 29, the Sivakasi MLA brings generational change, gender representation and media fluency. Her ascent as a young woman minister from a politically masculine industrial belt gives Vijay’s first ministry one of its sharpest visual messages.

By evening, the shape of the new government was clear: a Cabinet built from the strange new chemistry of Tamil Nadu politics – fan clubs, bureaucrats, influencers, defectors, professionals, and old warriors gathered around one actor-turned-CM.