It took five days, four meetings with the governor and unending negotiations with potential allies, but the Vijay thriller in Tamil Nadu is finally heading towards its climax. The actor-turned-politician, who formed the TVK two years ago and led it to victory on its debut in the Tamil Nadu elections, will take oath at 10 am on Sunday.
The sequel, with Vijay as Tamil Nadu chief minister, can then begin.
When the results came out on Monday, the superstar and his party shocked most political analysts by upending the state’s political landscape and breaking the nearly six-decade duopoly of the two Dravidian parties, the DMK and the AIADMK.
Having secured 108 seats in the 234-member Assembly – 10 short of the majority – the stage seemed set for a smooth ascension to power for the TVK, but a rocky road followed. After receiving support from the Congress, which has five MLAs, Vijay met Governor Rajendra Arlekar on Wednesday and staked claim to form the government, but was advised that he needed more support.
Having secured 108 seats in the 234-member Assembly – 10 short of the majority – the stage seemed set for a smooth ascension to power for the TVK, but a rocky road followed. After receiving support from the Congress, which has five MLAs, Vijay met Governor Rajendra Arlekar on Wednesday and staked claim to form the government, but was advised that he needed more support.
Hectic discussions with parties and more meetings with the governor followed, and the CPI and CPI(M), which fought the elections in an alliance with the DMK, agreed to support him, adding four more MLAs to the tally. Since Vijay has been elected from two constituencies, the alliance’s number of legislators stood at 116 (TVK 107, Congress 5, Left 4), two short of the magic figure.
As this was happening, reports began emerging of an unlikely alliance of the DMK and the AIADMK trying to cobble together numbers, which added another layer of uncertainty and gave Vijay’s supporters pause.
The TVK kept courting another DMK ally, Thol Thirumavalavan’s VCK, but a breakthrough continued to elude the party. It was only on Saturday evening that the VCK pledged the unconditional support of its two MLAs, taking the tally to exactly 118. Two more MLAs were added soon after, when yet another constituent of the DMK-led alliance, the Indian Union Muslim League, said it would support Vijay, taking his coalition to a relatively comfortable 120 MLAs.