CHENNAI — The state's new Chief Minister, a film star who retired from cinema in 2024 to enter public life, has clarified that his move into politics was always a matter of service rather than ambition, days after the party he built from his personal fan-welfare association took charge of the government and its budget.

The transition completes a sequence the state has rehearsed before. Two of its previous chief ministers also arrived from the film industry, each having first organised admirers into welfare units that distributed relief, ran eye camps, and, in time, votes. A party functionary described the model as "the people's movement reaching its logical destination," noting that the association had spent seventeen years preparing for responsibilities it had not yet been given.

The party secured 108 seats and emerged as the single largest, ending a half-century in which power had alternated between two others. Officials said the Chief Minister remained focused on governance rather than performance, a distinction the administration would draw at a later date. "He never wanted to be only a hero on screen," a spokesperson said, adding that the screen had been a preliminary venue.

The welfare wing, once known for arranging fan tributes and distributing flood kits, will now perform those functions for a state of more than seven crore. The fan clubs have been absorbed into the apparatus of government. Members long accustomed to greeting the leader at theatres will now do so at the secretariat, where the lighting is described as adequate.