Actor Kamal Haasan on Sunday said he will soon float a political party, and the first step towards this end will be the launch of a mobile application on Tuesday – his 63rd birthday, IANS reported. The app is meant to help him reach his fans and keep an account of the funds his party will collect.

Haasan announced the step while speaking at an event organised in Chennai to mark the 39th anniversary of the Kamal Haasan Narppani Iyakkam, a welfare association established by his fans. Nearly 1,500 fans attended the event.

The actor said floating a party would need Rs 30 crore and requested his fans to contribute funds. “I am the one begging here,” he said, according to The Times of India. “I am seeking charity for the people of Tamil Nadu. I have been doing it for the past 37 years.”

On the defamation case filed against him for his comments on “Hindu terror”, Haasan said jails will run out of place if people were arrested for speaking the truth. “Terrorism is different from extremism,” he said, according to the Hindustan Times. “I don’t preach my ideology to others. I am a rationalist.”

In a column for Tamil weekly magazine Ananda Vikatan, Haasan wrote that while earlier, “the Hindu right wing would not indulge in violence, but instead held debates”, it now “used muscle power instead of dialogue” once the old tactic failed.