Jayalalithaa arrives to meet governor Surjit Singh Barnala at Raj Bhavan on Sunday. Barnala has invited her to form the government. Jayalalithaa will take oath on Monday with 33 ministers. AB Bardhan, Narendra Modi and Chandrababu Naidu are expected to attend. (PTI)

Chennai, May 15: Jayalalithaa will be sworn in as chief minister tomorrow at the Centenary Auditorium of Madras University, a venue she considers lucky.

The time — 12.15pm — has been chosen by her astrologers. Monday, a full moon day, is seen as auspicious for new beginnings.

The auditorium, the largest in the city with a capacity of 1,400 and facing Marina Beach, was the venue where Jayalalithaa was sworn in for her previous two terms as well.

While PWD officials went about sprucing up the hall, AIADMK workers lined the 9km route to it from Jayalalithaa’s house with party flags and banners.

The authorities had also blocked the Nehru Indoor Stadium, 4km away, as the chosen venue of DMK president Karunanidhi but that hall was released after Friday’s results.

Tamil Nadu has had an interesting choice of swearing-in venues, and one ceremony that was held in secrecy.

In 1977, when MGR rode to power for the first time, he had declared he would take oath in front of the Anna statue on Mount Road. When it was explained this would not be possible logistically since a huge stage had to be erected, MGR tweaked his plan. He addressed supporters from a small dais near the statue and then took the oath at Rajaji Hall, 500 metres away.

In 1980, returning to power following a premature dismissal by Indira Gandhi, he repeated the exercise.

Re-elected a third time in December 1984, when he was recovering from a kidney transplant in New York, the swearing-in was pushed back to January 1985 when he returned.

Since he had suffered stroke-induced speech impairment, the government did not take chances and MGR took oath in front of a select audience, including the state’s Chief Justice, with the media kept out. Photos taken by the information department were handed out and even the state films division was not permitted to film the ceremony. The then chief secretary later announced that the “chief minister took the oath by clearly reading out the required lines.”

After MGR’s death in 1987, the DMK returned to power in 1989 and Karunanidhi chose Valluvar Kottam, a hall in central Chennai that he had designed. But his government did not last its term — dismissed in 1991 for hobnobbing with the LTTE. After that, even Karunanidhi the rationalist decided the hall was unlucky for him. So in 1996, he took oath at Raj Bhavan and in 2006, at the Nehru Stadium.

The DMK had skipped all three of MGR’s swearing-in ceremonies and also that of Jayalalithaa in 1991. But in 2002, on a specific invitation from her, Karunanidhi deputed son Stalin and general secretary K. Anbazhagan to attend — the only time the state has seen such a gesture.

The AIADMK, too, stayed away from Karunanidhi’s swearing-in ceremonies in 1989, 1996 and 2006.

“The Dravidian leaders have always taken their electoral defeats too personally…. It is a tragedy that they have never displayed any social niceties unlike their political friends in the neighbouring states or in the north,” said columnist Gnani.

The biggest question tomorrow would be whether the DMK will be present on Jayalalithaa’s big day.