By M.R. Narayan Swamy
Tamil Nadu was in a state of unexpected flux as superstar Vijay battled with the New Delhi-appointed governor to get a crucial invite to prove his legislative majority, with some political parties saying the drama was being orchestrated by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
After leading his Tamilga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) to stunning victories in 108 seats in the 234-member Assembly, Vijay faced a sudden googly from Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar, who said the actor did not have the support of enough members to weave a majority of 118 legislators.
As TVK supporters staged protests against the stand, which went against established norms that a legislative majority must be shown in the House and not in a governor’s office, the Congress and other parties blasted Arlekar, a political appointee allied with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The Congress party, which said all five of its newly elected legislators in Tamil Nadu would back Vijay, accused the governor of trying to rewrite the rules of the game under pressure from the BJP, which could win only one seat in the southern state.
“Tamil Nadu voted for change,” Congress MP Manickam Tagore told the media. “The TVK has 108 members. With our support, the total is 113. The governor, a former BJP man, is under pressure.
“The BJP’s mindset is not to make Vijay the chief minister. We know the governor is delaying the decision. Although the governor is a good man, he is under pressure. This is very unfortunate.”
Like other political players, Tagore said Vijay should be invited to form a government quickly and asked to face a vote of confidence in the Assembly.
Sources in Vijay’s party said they had also sought support of four smaller parties: the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Viduthalai Chiruthaigai Katchi (VCK), and the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), all of which have two members each in the Tamil Nadu legislature.
Although the VCK has an alliance with the outgoing ruling DMK party, it openly came out against the governor’s refusal to allow Vijay to prove his majority in the Tamil Nadu Assembly.
VCK chief Thol Thirumavalavan said the governor had no right to tell Vijay to prove his majority support before inviting him to form the government. “Vijay should first assume charge as the chief minister. This is the people’s mandate. After that, it will be his responsibility to prove his majority.”
The TVK, a party source told Jaffna Monitor, was simultaneously in covert talks with a section of the AIADMK party, a BJP ally, to influence a third of its 49 MLAs to break ranks and prop up Vijay as the new chief minister of Tamil Nadu.
The Governor’s office said in a terse statement that the “requisite majority support in the Tamil Nadu Assembly, essential for forming a government, has not been established.”
According to political activists, the governor wants Vijay to submit a statement to him giving the names and signatures of at least 118 newly elected members.
A Vijay colleague said if the governor remained adamant, the party would be forced to move the Supreme Court to secure justice.
“We are the single largest party, and convention demands that we should be invited to form a government,” the source said. “We will prove our majority in the House. If we fail, we will quit. It is as simple as that.”
Another TVK source told Jaffna Monitor: “We will not have any alliance with the BJP, DMK, and AIADMK. Yes, we may want some AIADMK people to switch allegiance. But we won’t embrace that party.”
As if to prove that the governor was indeed acting at the BJP’s behest, the only two parties that formally came out in support of his anti-Vijay posture were the BJP and its ally, the AIADMK.
Vijay, one of India’s best-paid movie stars, created a sensation when he, fighting first very first election, led the TVK to a history-making win in as many as 108 constituencies across the sprawling state of Tamil Nadu. Vijay himself won from two places.
The two-year-old TVK’s performance crushed Tamil Nadu’s two established Dravidian parties, the ruling DMK and the main opposition AIADMK, which won just 59 and 47 seats. All other established parties also suffered a rout.
During his election campaign, Vijay, 51, whose father is a Christian and mother a Hindu, called the BJP “fascist” and pledged that he would never give any quarter to “communalism” – a political euphemism for Hindu supremacist politics championed by Modi’s BJP.
In other state elections held along with Tamil Nadu, the BJP retained power in the north-eastern state of Assam and stormed to power in West Bengal with thumping majorities. It also secured three seats in the southern state of Kerala, where the Congress dislodged the Communists from office.
Tamil Nadu alone firmly rebuffed the BJP, despite the party’s hectic efforts over the past five years to make critical inroads into the state of 85 million people. Prime Minister Modi personally invested significant time and energy in trying to swing Tamil voters toward his party. But the Vijay tsunami drowned the BJP, which had four seats in the outgoing Tamil Nadu Assembly and now has just one.
