TVK leader Joseph Vijay met the Tamil Nadu governor on Wednesday and staked claim to form the government, against the backdrop of the Congress extending its support to the superstar after once again sundering its alliance with the DMK.

Girish Chodankar, the all-India Congress committee in-charge of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, met Vijay at his office in Chennai on Wednesday along with the party’s five MLAs and handed over the letter of support from the AICC.

Later in the day, Vijay, accompanied by senior TVK functionaries, met the governor-in-charge, Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar, to formally stake his party’s claim to form the new government.

Vijay was reportedly keen to hold the swearing-in as early as Thursday, but the governor is learnt to have sought letters of support from the TVK’s other allies as well so that he is sure the party has the requisite numbers before he invites Vijay to form the government.

The TVK, which won 108 seats, now has an effective floor strength of 112 with the support of the Congress, six short of a simple majority. Vijay has won two seats and will have to give up one.

The TVK has reached out to other DMK allies, the CPM, CPI and the VCK, for support. The three parties have two MLAs each and are expected to announce their decision on Thursday. If these parties back Vijay, his floor strength will go up to 118, the exact majority mark.

The Congress has placed one condition for its support — that the TVK keep out of the alliance “any communal forces that do not believe in the Constitution of India”.

Following the TVK’s formal request to the Congress to extend support to the fledgling party for forming the government in Tamil Nadu, Chodankar said the people’s verdict in Vijay’s favour was clearly “for a secular, progressive and welfarist government that believes in constitutional principles”.

Vijay and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi have jointly pledged to “respect this historic verdict”, Chodankar said, adding: “This alliance is not only for the formation of the new government, but also for future elections to the local body organisations,
the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.”

Emphasising that it is the Congress’s duty to “respect, uphold and fulfil this mandate, which is in line” with the national party’s “secular, progressive and welfarist policies”, Chodankar said that the Pradesh Congress Committee and the Congress Legislature Party (CLP), on the advice of the AICC, decided to extend full support to the TVK to form the next government.

Earlier, the CLP unanimously elected S. Rajesh Kumar, the MLA of Killiyurin Kanniyakumari district, as its leader.

Asked by reporters whether the Congress had betrayed the DMK after fighting the elections as part of the alliance led by M.K. Stalin’s party, Chodankar said: “For us, the people’s mandate is supreme.”

To another query, he said the Congress would be part of the TVK-led government, the first time since Independence that Tamil Nadu would have an official coalition government and not allies extending outside support to the main party.

“We will take responsibility (as part of the government). Vijay and his team were very happy to receive our letter of support,” Chodankar said.

DMK functionaries have accused the Congress of being “back-stabbers”.

“The Congress has not only back-stabbed the DMK but also the people of Tamil Nadu,” DMK spokesperson and lawyer Saravanan said.

“The Congress has done this in other states as well and will soon face the music,” DMK veteran T.K.S. Elangovan said.

“Facing such betrayal is not new to us, though the DMK has stood shoulder-to-shoulder whenever the Congress had faced a crisis,” the seniormost DMK MP, T.R. Baalu, said.

Defending the Congress’s decision to offer support to the TVK, Sivaganga MP Karti P. Chidambaram said such a “post-poll alliance” was nothing new. The Congress has only “fulfilled its responsibility” to ensure a stable government in Tamil Nadu by backing a secular party, Karti said.

The Congress-DMK ties in Tamil Nadu since Indira Gandhi’s tenure as Prime Minister have witnessed several trying phases and reunions until the DMK quit the UPA II government in 2013 over differences on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue. The alliance was again revived in 2018 ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls after Stalin took over as DMK president. Stalin was the first to propose Rahul for the Prime Minister’s post.

The latest break in the alliance may also undermine the INDIA bloc’s unity at the national level as the DMK has over 40 MPs in the two Houses taken together.

The AIADMK, which was pushed to the third place with 47 MLAs in the just-ended elections, scoffed at speculation that it was mulling the possibility of offering support to the TVK. Senior AIADMK leader K.P. Munusamy told reporters that “under no circumstances did we offer support to the Vijay-led TVK”.