Five days after Tamil Nadu handed over its rule, Vijay received his majority, the governor’s approval, and a time and place to take the oath.
Between the ruling on May 4 and the swearing-in of the TVK-led government on May 10, one of the most murky negotiations in the state’s political history is taking place — measured not just by votes or seats, but also by deleted tweets, “forged” messages, last-minute setbacks and an eventful Saturday evening.
Governor RV Arlikar canceled his weekend trip from Chennai, decided not to go to Kerala for the time being, and finally met the actor-turned-politician who has been doing the rounds at Lok Bhavan throughout the week.
The numbers tell the story more clearly.
10-11: The shortage that started it all
Vijay’s Tamil Vetri Kazhagam (TVK) party won 108 seats in the April 23 elections, the largest single mandate in the 234-member assembly. The majority sign is 118, so it was 10 short.
Since Vijay won from two constituencies (he can vote only once even if he has two seats), the number of actual confidence votes for TVK within the Assembly has come down to 107. So the gap in majority is: 11 odd MLAs. The same number of players you need to put together a soccer team — a striking parallel to his 2019 blockbuster “Bigil,” in which coach Michael Rayappan spends an entire movie convincing 11 reluctant women to play together.
The real-life recruitment campaign was no less brutal.
(Technically, even 10 would have done the trick for now, since the voting power of the House would drop to 233 when Vijay voted once – so the mark to reach was 117, or 118 as the Governor wished.)
5 days of chaos and a coalition of 6 parties
The Congress moved first, offering five seats but with conditions – TVK must keep the “communal forces”, namely the BJP, AIADMK and their allies, out of power. The CPI followed with two seats, offering conditional external support. The CPI(M) matched him with two others, citing the need to prevent what the state minister called the BJP’s “back entry”.
Thus, the number of MLAs reached 116. The arithmetic was not yet done mathematicsto borrow vernacular from Gen-Z who are seen as Vijay’s main vote bank.
The crucial final pieces – the two VCK seats and/or the two IUML seats, both part of the losing DMK-led alliance – took the better part of five days to come together.
VCK chief Thul Thirumavalavan even taunted Vijay among themselves about the alliance with the “dynastic” Congress. The union initially expressed its support before leader A.M. Shah Jahan said categorically: “We have not sent any message to anyone. These are all rumours.”
Meanwhile, AMMK’s TTV Dhinakaran accused TVK of distributing a fake letter of support from his party, and wrote to the governor supporting AIADMK’s Edappadi K Palaniswami instead, calling the entire episode “horse trading and a mockery of democracy”.
The Congress and the two Left parties remained committed to Vijay, even though the move signaled major fissures in the national-level opposition caucus, or Indian bloc.
A surreal moment came on Friday night, when VCK’s X account posted a letter of support for Vijay, then deleted the post, and the account was gone within an hour. The screenshot circulated anyway.
By Saturday, 5pm, the VCK and IUML had finally submitted written letters of support to TVK, taking the alliance’s tally to 120 seats – two seats shy of the majority mark, and enough on paper to form a stable government.
The coalition now includes six parties, including TVK.
Read also | President says VCK supported Vijay’s TVK to prevent President’s rule
6:30 meeting: Governor relents
After breaching the 5 pm hour too, it looked like submission of messages might be delayed, as Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlikar – a BJP veteran from Goa who is also the governor of Kerala – booked a flight to Thiruvananthapuram for 7:10 pm.
The two-hour window for sending messages and getting nods seemed uncomfortably tight.
The term of the current Assembly ends on May 10, Sunday, which means the President’s Act may have come into effect – and the suspected ‘back entry’ of the BJP-led central government when the BJP has a single MLA total in Tamil Nadu.
Following this, the Governor canceled his trip to Kerala and a meeting was scheduled at 6:30 pm at Lok Bhavan.
Arlikar, who met Vijay three times in three days without extending a formal invitation once — each time citing insufficient written evidence to support a majority — eventually sat across the table from a TVK delegation carrying letters from 120 MLAs, so the TVK alliance has 121 seats (including two with Vijay).
The fourth meeting featured a similar appearance to the previous three meetings, with Vijay giving the ruler another Poonadai (golden shawl). This meeting, which included Vijay with leaders of other parties, lasted nearly two hours.
The numbers are now sufficient, by any constitutional calculation, to form a government.
May 10: Timely swearing-in
Finally, Vijay, the next Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, received his appointment letter at around 8.30 pm.
He will be sworn in at 10:30 am on Sunday, marking the beginning of the time of Thalapathi, or “The Leader” as his fans call him. The venue is Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium, Chennai.
Coach Michael Rayappan, Vijay’s character in the movie ‘Bigil’, wins the national championship on penalties – fast and well, nerve-wracking, and the final kick decides everything. It turns out that the politician Vijay needed every one of those kicks to finally pull it off.
He must formally confirm his majority in the House of Representatives on May 13.
