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Rohit Kumar

NEW DELHI, May 8: The Actor-turned politician and Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) chief C Joseph Vijay is set to take oath as the new Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu on Saturday.

As per the information, the oath-taking ceremony will take place at 11 am. This comes after Vijay met Governor RV Arlekar for the third time on Friday and staked claim to form the government after consolidating support from multiple parties following the fractured mandate in the recently concluded Assembly elections. Vijay has claimed the support of 120 members in the 234-member State Assembly, two more than the majority mark of 118.

The morning was dominated by talk of a DMK-AIADMK pact and by the afternoon the script had flipped and the TVK said it had a majority. Hours later, the situation saw a twist worthy of a thriller starring Vijay and the TVK’s numbers began to wobble again coming to a happy ending.

Vijay met Tamil Nadu Governor RV Arlekar in the evening and staked claim to form the government, declaring that he has the majority support. Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) swept last month’s election; the party won 108 of 234 seats on its debut to break Dravidian giants DMK and AIADMK’s 62-year chokehold on state politics. But the joy of that win dissipated quickly after Governor Arlekar made it clear he would not invite the TVK leader to form the government without majority support confirmation.

Two meetings in two days – Wednesday and Thursday – but Arlekar didn’t budge. He told Vijay yesterday that he could not run a government of 113 MLAs when the House majority is 118. And he insisted on letters of support from as many MLA-elects. Vijay, however, had only 108 from the TVK. He needed at least 10 more seats.

The Congress broke from allies Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam to contribute five, on condition Vijay and TVK do not ally with ‘communal parties’ – a reference to the Bharatiya Janata Party that is partnered with the AIADMK. The DMK-Congress split – after three election wins in seven years – generated a bitter subplot to this drama, with each accusing the other of betrayal.

The TVK then also opened talks with the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and the Communist Party of India. By Friday afternoon, after two rounds of meetings, sources said all three had agreed to support Vijay. All three were also DMK allies and had been in talks with MK Stalin’s party over alternative routes to power, including remaining by his side and entering what many derided an ‘unholy alliance’, ie, tying up with his arch-rivals, the AIADMK. They have exactly the number he needs – two each for a total of six.

Vijay was also reported to have the support of one of two MLA-elects from the Indian Union Muslim League and the lone MLA-elect from TTV Dhinakaran’s Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam. Reports then began emerging that the TVK was one short of the majority mark, a situation that was resolved as the party chief prepared to meet the governor. It is still not clear who among the VCK, the IUML MLA and AMMK are supporting the TVK.

Left parties CPI and CPM have announced outside support to the TVK. They will not be part of the cabinet. The Congress expects two berths for its support. Speaking during a joint press conference at Chennai, M. Veerapandian and P. Shanmugam, the State-unit leaders of the CPI and CPI(M) respectively announced: “We will not join the TVK Cabinet; our support will be from the outside. We will continue to travel with the DMK in the struggle to oppose communal forces and protect Tamil Nadu’s rights.”

The chaos included speculation of a deal between the DMK and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, two parties that share an ideology – the social justice movement started by EV ‘Periyar’ Ramasamy – but are otherwise fierce enemies. Political observers suggested the two big Dravidian parties were driven by similar fears.

For the DMK this brought back memories of 1977-87 when MGR kept it from winning any election till after he died. And for the AIADMK, it’s more recent; Sections within pointed to the past decade in which the party lost three consecutive polls to Stalin. However, the ‘unholy’ alliance never materialized. In fact it never moved past speculation, with senior leaders on both sides confessing that it could never survive in the face of vehement opposition from ideologues in both camps. There was also brief speculation a deal between the TVK and the AIADMK – which has 47 seats.

The BJP has denied any role in the stand-off between the TVK and Arlekar. “It is a fractured verdict… TVK doesn’t have a majority. If he (Vijay) proves a majority, then the governor will constitutionally accept it. There is no confusion…” the BJP’s state unit spokesperson Narayan Thirupathy said. Thirupathy rejected claims the BJP had directed the governor to stymie Vijay. “This is a democratic country. Elections happen here in a democratic way. Mr Vijay of the TVK has more seats. Everything will happen democratically. How can somebody pressure (someone)? These are all political rhetoric. I don’t think that is right.”

Meanwhile, making the end of the DMK’s alliance with the Congress official, Kanimozhi has written to the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, requesting that the seating arrangement of the party’s members be changed from their current positions next to their former ally.

The DMK, with 22 MPs, is the fourth largest constituent of the Opposition INDIA alliance, which has been under strain for some time now and appears to have reached a breaking point with the Congress – which fought the Tamil Nadu elections as part of a coalition led by the DMK – supporting Vijay’s TVK to form a government.

Writing to the Speaker of the Lok Sabha Om Birla, Kanimozhi highlighted “changed political circumstances” and said the partnership with the Congress had ended. “I write to respectfully request suitable changes in the seating arrangement of the Members of Parliament belonging to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in the Lok Sabha. In view of the changed political circumstances and as our alliance with the Indian National Congress has come to an end, it may not be appropriate for our Members to continue occupying the present seating arrangement alongside them in the House,” the DMK MP from Thoothukudi said.

“I therefore request your good office to kindly make the necessary arrangements for the Hon’ble Members of the DMK Parliamentary Party to be allotted separate seating, enabling them to effectively discharge their responsibilities in the August House. I shall be grateful for your kind consideration in this regard,” she added.

The DMK and Congress, which had been allies for decades with blips in between, came together again in 2016. The DMK made its sense of betrayal by the Congress clear on Wednesday when a party leader called the ally a “backstabber.”

DMK Spokesperson Saravanan Annadurai also claimed that the Congress won five seats only because it was in a coalition led by the party. “Otherwise, they would have drawn a blank at the recent polls,” he asserted. The Congress has said it is supporting the TVK to honor the mandate of the people of Tamil Nadu, maintaining that this is the “responsible” thing to do.

Kanimozhi’s letter brought the simmering discontent in the opposition bloc to the fore on a day another key constituent, the Samajwadi Party, also took an apparent jibe at the Congress for trying to help Vijay. Posting images of himself with DMK chief MK Stalin and Trinamool Congress Chairperson Mamata Banerjee, both of whom lost Assembly elections in their states, Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav wrote in Hindi, “We don’t abandon people in times of difficulty.”

The Samajwadi Party had contested the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in an alliance with the Congress in Uttar Pradesh and stunned the BJP by winning 37 of 80 seats, emerging as the second largest constituent of the INDIA bloc. While appearing to work together at the national level, the Congress and the Trinamool Congress also contested against each other in the West Bengal elections. Banerjee had also been vying for leadership of the INDIA alliance and the tensions between the Trinamool and the Congress were apparent during campaigning for the Bengal elections as well.