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How Vijay finally got Guv nod to take oath as TN CM: 6 parties, 5 days, 4 meetings, and a flight cancelled just in time
By Saturday, both VCK and IUML gave support letters to TVK, taking Vijay's tally to 120, beyond the majority mark. The Governor was set to fly out, but did not.
Five days after Tamil Nadu delivered its verdict, Vijay has his majority, the Governor's nod, and a time and place for his oath.
Between the hung verdict of May 4 and the scheduled oath-taking of a TVK-led government on May 10, sits one of the most filmy negotiations in the state's political history — measured not just in votes or seats but in deleted tweets, “forged” letters, last-minute reversals, and an action-packed Saturday evening.
Governor RV Arlekar cancelled his weekend flight out of Chennai, deciding not to go to Kerala for now, and finally met the actor-turned-politician who has been making rounds of the Lok Bhavan all week.
The numbers tell the story most cleanly.
10-11: The shortfall that started it all
Vijay's Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) won 108 seats in the April 23 elections, the single largest mandate in a hung 234-member assembly. The majority mark is 118, so it was 10 short.
Since Vijay won from two constituencies (he can only vote once even if he has two seats), TVK's effective trust-vote count inside the assembly fell to 107. The gap to majority, thus: 11 individual MLAs. The same number of players you need to field a football team — a striking parallel with his 2019 blockbuster ‘Bigil’, where coach Michael Rayappan spent an entire film convincing 11 reluctant women to play together.
The real-life recruitment drive proved no less gruelling.
(Technically, even 10 would have done for now, since the House voting strength would come down to 233 as Vijay votes once — so the mark to hit was 117, or 118 as the Governor pleased.)
5 days of chaos, and a coalition of 6 parties
The Congress moved first, offering five seats but with conditions — TVK must keep “communal forces”, meaning the BJP, AIADMK and allies, out of power. The CPI followed with two seats, offering conditional outside support. The CPI(M) matched it with two more, citing the need to prevent what its state secretary called a "backdoor entry" of the BJP.
That brought the MLA tally to 116. The math wasn't yet mathing, to borrow slang from Gen-Z who're seen as Vijay's key vote bank.
The crucial final pieces — VCK's two seats and/or IUML's two, both otherwise part of the losing DMK-led alliance — took the better part of five days to come together.
VCK chief Thol Thirumavalavan even taunted Vijay in between about allying with the “dynastic” Congress. The IUML initially signalled support before leader AM Shahjahan flatly denied it: "We did not give any letter to anybody. All these are rumours."
The AMMK's TTV Dhinakaran, meanwhile, accused the TVK of circulating a forged support letter from his party, wrote to the Governor backing the AIADMK's Edappadi K Palaniswami instead, and described the entire episode as “horse-trading and a mockery of democracy”.
The Congress and the two Left parties stuck with Vijay, even as the move signalled major cracks in the national-level Opposition grouping, the INDIA 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. A screenshot circulated anyway.
By Saturday, 5 pm, both VCK and IUML finally submitted written support letters to the TVK, taking the alliance tally to a confirmed 120 — two seats beyond the majority mark and, on paper, enough to form a stable government.
Including the TVK, the alliance now has six parties.
Also read | VCK supported Vijay's TVK to prevent President's rule, says chief
6:30 meeting: Governor relents
After that 5 pm breakthrough, too, it appeared that the submission of letters might be delayed, as Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar — a BJP veteran from Goa who serves as Kerala's Governor too — had a flight to Thiruvananthapuram booked for 7:10 pm.
The two-hour window to submit the letters and get his nod looked uncomfortably tight.
The current assembly's tenure ends on May 10, Sunday, which means President's Rule may have kicked in — and the suspected “backdoor entry” of the BJP-led central government when the BJP has a sum total of one MLA in Tamil Nadu.
Then, the Governor cancelled his Kerala trip, and a meeting was scheduled for 6:30 pm at Lok Bhavan.
Arlekar, who had met Vijay thrice in three days without once extending a formal invitation — each time citing insufficient written proof of majority support — finally sat across the table from a TVK delegation carrying letters from 120 MLAs, and the TVK alliance thus has 121 seats (including two with Vijay).
The fourth meeting featured a similar visual as the previous three, of Vijay giving the Governor yet another Ponnadai (golden shawl). This meeting, where Vijay took along leaders of other parties, went on for nearly two hours.
The numbers were now enough, by any constitutional reckoning, to form a government.
May 10: The oath, just in time
Finally, Tamil Nadu's next CM, Vijay, got the appointment letter just around 8.30 pm.
He will take his oath at 10.30am, Sunday, ushering in the time of Thalapathy, or ‘commander’ as his fans call him. The venue is the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium, Chennai.
Coach Michael Rayappan, Vijay's character in ‘Bigil’, wins a national championship on penalties — fast and how, nerve-shredding, last-kick-decides-it-all. Vijay the politician, it turns out, needed every one of those kicks to finally net it.
He has to formally prove majority on the floor of the House on May 13.
