Vijay to take oath as Tamil Nadu Chief Minister tomorrow as Governor accepts TVK's 120

Five days after the count, the suspense is over. Tamil Nadu Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar has accepted Vijay’s claim to form the government, and the actor-politician will be sworn in as Tamil Nadu’s next chief minister tomorrow morning at 11 am at the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium in Chennai. Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam will be the ruling party. M.K. Stalin’s DMK, the outgoing government, will sit on the opposition benches.

The breakthrough came in Vijay’s third meeting with Arlekar at Lok Bhavan this evening, the only one of the three he walked into with a complete numbers ledger. The arithmetic the TVK presented to the Governor reads:

• TVK: 107
• Congress (alliance): 5
• CPI (outside support): 2
• CPI(M) (outside support): 2
• IUML: 2
• VCK: 2

Total: 120 in a 234-member assembly where the simple majority is 118. TVK’s nominal seat count is 108, but Vijay won two constituencies and will retain only one, leaving the working strength at 107. The final two pieces fell into place on Friday: the CPI and CPI(M) handed over their letters at a joint press conference, the VCK followed, and the IUML’s came in late evening, taking the count past the 118 mark with two seats to spare.

The Left’s letters carried a politically interesting caveat. CPI state secretary M. Veerapandian and CPI(M)‘s P. Shanmugam said it together at their joint press conference: “We will not join the TVK Cabinet; our support will be from the outside. We will continue to travel with the DMK in the struggle to oppose communal forces and protect Tamil Nadu’s rights.” It is a formulation that lets the Left park itself with TVK on government formation while keeping the long DMK alignment intact on every other plank, and Arlekar accepted that arrangement as sufficient for an invitation.

Within the Congress, Maharashtra president Harshwardhan Sapkal defended the TVK tie-up as a constitutional and democratic call against the BJP. Mani Shankar Aiyar dissented publicly. The AIADMK, after a week of speculation about a quiet AIADMK-DMK arrangement, called those reports rumours and ruled out any tie-up with Stalin. AMMK’s T.T.V. Dhinakaran clarified that his party’s lone MLA stays with the National Democratic Alliance.

The bigger story is the one the count itself wrote. Vijay’s TVK is the first non-Dravidian party to take Fort St George since 1967, dethroning the DMK with 108 seats in the party’s debut electoral run, and the first chief minister of Tamil Nadu in nearly six decades who is neither from the DMK nor the AIADMK. Tomorrow’s stadium ceremony is where that switch is formally pulled. After three trips back from Lok Bhavan without an invitation, Vijay is back to a venue where TVK cadre had once gathered in tears expecting an oath that did not come, this time with the Governor’s nod in writing.