Actor-politician Kamal Haasan takes oath as Rajya Sabha MP

The Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) chief, who has never been an MP before, took oath in Tamil.

Haasan's journey to the Rajya Sabha was paved by Tamil Nadu's ruling party DMK that had left one seat for its ally, MNM.

The 70-year-old, who is one of the most influential artistes, has worked in films in various languages including Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada and Bengali.

An actor-director-producer, Haasan has featured in over 230 films and won multiple awards including National Film Awards four times.

He formally joined politics, launching his own party MNM in 2018.

The actor-politician was recently caught in a controversy during the release of his latest film Thug Life.

During the promotions of the film, Haasan controversially said Kannada was born out of Tamil.

Though initially his film was banned in Karnataka after protests against his remarks, the Supreme Court slammed the Karnataka High Court's order to Haasan to apologise.

The top court strongly condemned the attempts to ban the film on the basis of threats from a mob.