The contestants’ list for Nasser’s team, also called ‘Pandavar Ani’, for elections to the South Indian Artists Association or Nadigar Sangam, is reportedly out. An official announcement is yet to be made, though.
Nasser will contest for president once again, with Vishal Krishna as general secretary and Karthi as treasurer. However, Ponvannan has been replaced with two contestants – actor S Murugan, also called Poochi Murugan, and Karunas, for the post of vice president.
The 26 members in Nasser’s team are mostly those who have already contested and campaigned for the group.
According to sources, Kovai Sarala, Manobala, Prasanna, Sriman, Pasupathy, Ramana, Nanda, Thalapthy Dinesh, Sonia Bose, Kutty Padmini, Prem, Rajesh, Gerald Milton, Kalimuthu, Ratnappa, MA Prakash, Ajay Rathnam, Jr Balaiah, Hema, Kush, (MGR) Latha, Nithin Sathya, Parutheeveeran Saravanan, Adhi, PL Gandhi and Vasudevan have joined Nasser.
The opposing faction needs to come up with a strong team to beat them. As of now, actor Udhaya has confirmed that he will be contesting for the post of general secretary opposite Vishal. It was reported last week that actor-producer Ishari K Ganesh, the owner of Vels University, may stand for president. This is yet to be confirmed. Both Ishari Ganesh and Udhaya supported Nasser during the last elections.
Recommended
Speculations about the actors contesting opposite Nasser have been doing the rounds for a month, with names such as STR and his father T Rajendar, Radhika Sarathkumar and others being mentioned. Previous office bearers Sarathkumar and Radha Ravi will not be able to contest this time because the land misappropriation case in which they were convicted is pending.
Meanwhile, there were some allegations of fund misappropriation in the fundraising event organised in Malaysia by Vishal, Nasser and the current office bearers. However, this has not been proved.
Retired judge E Padmanabhan has been appointed to preside over the Nadigar Sangam elections this time. It will be held at MGR Janaki College in Chennai on June 23 from 7 am to 5 pm.