Actor Vishal is elected President of Tamil Film Producers' Council

Actor Vishal was declared the new president of the Tamil Film Producers Council after his victory in the council elections on Sunday. The actor had been suspended for a brief period from the body by the previous office bearers.

The elections were held on April 2 at the Kandaswamy Naidu College in Anna Nagar. The results for the election were announced late on Sunday night.

Vishal scored an emphatic win, polling 476 votes as against his opponents, Radhakrishnan, who got 332 votes, and KR, who secured 224 votes.

All the other members from Vishal's team, except director and producer Mysskin, won as well.

Actor Prakash Raj and director Gautham Vasudev Menon were elected as the vice presidents to the committee. They overcame the challenge from K Rajan, Suresh Kamatchi, A M Ratnam and P T Selvakumar to earn the right to serve as the vice Presidents of the TFPC.

Producer S R Prabhu, again from Vishal's team, was elected the Treasurer. He defeated his opponents S A Chandrashekar and Vijaymurali quite convincingly. While he secured 394 votes, S A Chandrashekar got 326 votes and Vijaymurali got 212 votes.

K E Gnanavel Raja from the Namma Ani team won one of the two honorary secretary positions, while the other went to Kathiresan from producer K R's team. Kathiresan was the only member of K R's team to win, and was anointed as the honorary secretary of the council. Kathiresan defeated director Mysskin in the elections.

Vishal's win is significant since only last year the producer council chose to suspend the actor's primary membership in the body after it took offence to his statements.The actor had had criticised the manner in which the producer council was then functioning.

Unperturbed by the TFPC's decision to shunt him out, Vishal moved court. Though the TFPC promised to revoke his suspension upon receiving an apology, they later recanted on that promise. The council informed the court that it would not revoke the suspension as Vishal had expressed similar views in another interview to a television channel. Vishal's plea was then dismissed.

The actor later filed an appeal before a division bench, which faulted the suspension order passed by the Producer Council. The court, while giving the council a day's time to revoke the order by themselves, made it clear that it would step in and revoke the suspension if the producer council failed to do so.

It was only then that the producer council revoked its suspension order of Vishal's membership. Once he was back as a member, Vishal announced that he would contest the upcoming elections to the TFPC that were scheduled to be held on April 2.

The actor-producer, who is also the secretary of the Nadigar Sangam, thanked all those who had voted and said that the confidence the producers had placed in them would not go waste.