In a calculated and explosive press interaction on Friday, Tamil Nadu Law, Courts and Natural Resources Minister S Regupathy dropped a political bombshell by branding senior leader and former AIADMK heavyweight K A Sengottaiyan as a “sleeper cell” strategically deployed by the Bharatiya Janata Party inside actor-turned-politician Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), asserting that the veteran’s dramatic defection was never a genuine shift but part of a meticulously planned infiltration mission directed from New Delhi.

Regupathy, speaking with visible confidence, claimed that despite publicly severing ties with the AIADMK after five decades and joining TVK in the presence of Vijay himself, Sengottaiyan continues to be “remotely operated” by Union Home Minister Amit Shah on a daily basis. The minister warned that irrefutable proof of this covert arrangement would emerge at the appropriate moment, exposing the entire episode as a high-level political deception designed to serve BJP’s long-term interests in the Dravidian heartland.

The DMK stalwart elaborated that the former minister’s ultimate assignment is to gradually steer TVK toward a formal electoral understanding with the BJP ahead of future polls, thereby fracturing the anti-BJP vote and creating space for the saffron party to expand its footprint in a state where it has historically remained marginal. Regupathy categorically rejected the narrative that Sengottaiyan felt betrayed by the BJP, arguing that no individual genuinely abandoned by the party would still willingly execute its directives with such precision.

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Addressing a separate development, the minister referred to Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Minister P K Sekar Babu’s open invitation to Sengottaiyan to join the ruling DMK, describing it as a standard courtesy extended to any prominent leader exiting another organisation. He pointed out that the veteran politician’s immediate rejection of the offer only reinforced the suspicion that his movements are tightly controlled by an external force, preventing him from exercising independent political choice.

With these allegations, the DMK has fired the opening salvo in what promises to be a bitter pre-election narrative war, deliberately framing TVK as a potential conduit for BJP’s ambitions in Tamil Nadu and placing both Vijay’s party and the veteran leader under intense scrutiny as the state braces for the high-stakes 2026 Assembly battle.

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