Governor Holds Vijay's Oath as TVK Falls Ten Seats Short; Prakash Raj and Venkat Prabhu Push Back

Three days after the Tamil Nadu count was sealed, Vijay still has not been invited to take oath as chief minister. Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar, citing an unsatisfied view on the numbers, has so far declined to issue the invitation, even after the TVK chief returned to Raj Bhavan on Wednesday for a second meeting. The 233-strong assembly has 108 TVK members, ten short of the 118 needed for a simple majority, and the Governor has reportedly asked Vijay to produce written letters of support adding up to that figure before Raj Bhavan moves.

The Congress legislative party has formally extended its five MLAs to TVK, and overtures to a handful of DMK alliance partners are in motion. The plot thickened on Tuesday night when a sizeable group of AIADMK MLAs reportedly travelled to a private hotel in Puducherry, the textbook signature of horse-trading season. Speculation about an AIADMK-DMK arrangement to keep TVK out has swirled across Tamil cable and social media, while VCK and the Communist Party of India have been described as still weighing their public position.

The civic consequence has been visible on the ground. At Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium, TVK volunteers and women supporters who had assembled expecting a swearing-in left in tears once it became clear the Governor would not be issuing the invitation in time for the planned ceremony. The stadium had been the working assumption among cadre as the venue for an outsized celebration of a maiden electoral run that ended a fifty-nine-year DMK-AIADMK duopoly.

The film fraternity has been quick to weigh in, and the most pointed defence of the constitutional process has come from an unlikely corner. Actor Prakash Raj, no political ally of Vijay’s and a public sceptic of the actor-to-CM pipeline only days earlier, took the harder line on procedure. He called the Governor’s conduct “disgusting”, “unacceptable” and “unconstitutional”, and argued that if Vijay carries the people’s mandate he should be allowed onto the floor of the assembly to demonstrate it, the route the constitution actually prescribes for ambiguous numbers.

The point Prakash Raj is making is technical and load-bearing: a floor test is the named remedy for a fragmented count, and the Governor’s role is to facilitate it rather than to pre-adjudicate the support in the corridor. Coming from a voice that was openly critical of Vijay’s political pivot earlier this week, the line has carried further than a partisan defence might have.

Director Venkat Prabhu, a longtime Vijay collaborator and the man behind the now widely circulated “TN 07 CM 2026” number plate gag in The Greatest of All Time, reached for a quieter register. He said that the Lord tests good people but does not abandon them, a line aimed at the cluster of legal and political pressures gathering around Vijay rather than at the Governor specifically. The remark, picked up across Tamil-language coverage, was read within the wider squeeze on the TVK chief: the oath delay, the post-result coalition manoeuvring, and the ongoing court matters from his cinema and political careers running in parallel.

The constitutional clock now matters more than the political one. The 233 newly elected MLAs cannot take their oath until a government is invited to form, and a state without a sworn-in council of ministers is in administrative drift. If Arlekar continues to withhold the invitation through the next forty-eight hours, TVK is expected to test the matter in court. Either way, the floor of the assembly, not Raj Bhavan’s drawing room, is where the 108-versus-118 question is supposed to settle.