TAMIL NADU, (India): Keeping coalition partner Congress on tenterhooks, the ruling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) continues to tout Joseph Vijay as Prime Minister, even as the Chief Minister maintains a studied silence, though he is believed to have pacified the national party’s ruffled feathers.
A day after TNCC chief Manickam Tagore and party MP Praveen Chakravarty, considered the architects of the post-election Congress-TVK alliance, called on Vijay at the Secretariat to put at rest the verbal duel between the two parties on the question of Prime Ministerial candidature, a TVK legislator on Wednesday (Sept 3) claimed that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi himself would help Vijay to become the PM in 2029.
“Rahul Gandhi made our Thalapathi (Vijay) sit in the Chief Minister’s chair. Come 2029, he will do the same, by holding Vijay’s hand, and lead him to the Prime Minister’s chair,” Kanimozhi Santhosh, the TVK MLA from Kavundampalayam in Coimbatore district, told reporters in Chennai.
While senior TVK leader and Law and Electricity Minister CTR Nirmal Kumar has tried to downplay his party colleagues’ growing clamour for Vijay as PM, they are not stopping, in or out of the assembly.
“There is nothing unusual in this. It will not affect the alliance with the Congress or with other constituents like the VCK,” he told the media in Madurai, conscious that the minority Vijay government survives on the support of the allies.
Both sides want to ensure the issue does not torpedo the government, which has just concluded 100 days in office.
Congress Legislature Party leader Tharagai Cuthbert found nothing wrong in TVK members projecting Vijay as PM, despite the Chief Minister being very clear that Rahul Gandhi is the PM candidate in 2029.
“The TVK legislators are new to politics and continue to remain in the attitude of fans,” she said, reacting to the TVK MLA Kanimozhi.
Meanwhile, rebel TMC MP and actor Saayoni Ghosh called on Vijay earlier in the day, fuelling fresh speculations about Vijay’s and TVK’s future moves.
While a section of analysts holds that the TVK, pushing reels in the north and northeast, projecting Vijay as a pan-Indian leader, is not without reason and could checkmate Rahul and the Congress besides aiding the BJP, others maintain that the TVK president would not hurry to put his government at stake by taking on the Congress.
Whether this indicates the Vijay government’s rightward tilt or not will be known in the days ahead. For his silence has given room for speculation, putting the Congress in a spot. - The Statesman/ANN
