TAMIL NADU, (India): The government formation in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday (May 6) picked up pace after Congress offered conditional support to Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), which emerged as the single largest party in a hung house following Assembly polls.
Congress MLAs, led by the party’s Tamil Nadu incharge, Girish Chodankar met TVK Chief Vijay in Chennai and handed over their letter of support to him.
"Today, we met TVK leader Vijay along with our MLAs and senior leaders. We have extended full support to him.
"After we gave a letter of support, we spoke to Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge ji, LoP Rahul Gandhi ji and Gen Secy Venugopal ji. He thanked all three leaders for their support. We hope more parties will extend support to TVK.
"We hope the Governor will invite him to be sworn in as the CM. We will be taking accountability for the new government also. For us, the people’s mandate is supreme," Chodankar said.
Following this, the TVK chief met Tamil Nadu Governor Rajendra Arlekar at the Lok Bhavan and staked claim to form the Government in the State.
Vijay-led TVK had emerged as the single largest party with 108 seats in the recently held Tamil Nadu Assembly elections. While the performance of the party was stupendous given it was formed just two years back and was contesting its debut election, it fell short of the majority mark of 118 seats in a 234-member House.
While the counting of votes was still underway, Vijay’s father made a public appeal to the Congress to support the TVK. The grand old party, which contested the elections in an alliance with the DMK, offered full support but not without a condition.
Congress, which won five seats in the assembly elections, said that it will support the TVK under the condition that no “communal forces” will be part of the alliance.
“Our support shall be conditional upon the TVK keeping out from this alliance any communal forces that do not believe in the Constitution of India,” Chodankar said.
The Congress also stated that its alliance with the TVK is “not only for the formation of this government, but also for future elections to the local body organisations, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.”
Some reports suggested that TVK has offered the Congress party two cabinet berths in the new government.
Before the elections, the Congress was part of the MK Stalin-led government in Tamil Nadu but was not part of the government.
Before the polls, the DMK had reportedly made it clear that it will not share power with the Congress if their alliance returned to power. This even put a strain on the Congress-DMK relationship, which was also visible during the campaigning.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and DMK chief MK Stalin didn’t address any joint rallies. The DMK has described the Congress’s decision to join the TVK-led alliance as “backstabbing”. - The Statesman/ANN
