'Ready to Take the Risk': Inside Congress's Vijay Bet

Whether Vijay has the political spine to stitch together a stable government from this patchwork of conditions, demands, and midnight drama is the question Tamil Nadu is living through right now.

Girish Chodankar, the All India Congress Committee's in-charge for Tamil Nadu, was clearly in a hurry.

In as much hurry as the state Congress, which, without fathoming if the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam chief Joseph Vijay, with 107 seats under its belt, has the political acumen or the shrewdness to cobble together the support of another six MLAs to hit the magical figure of 118, the minimum required to form the government in the 234-member Tamil Nadu assembly.

When this reporter caught up with him, Chodankar promised a proper interview when he returned to Chennai, but when pressed for just five minutes, he gave enough -- brief, cryptic, and pointed responses enough to tell a larger story about where the Congress stands in Tamil Nadu's most dramatic political moment in decades.

'Ready to take the risk

"We can take the risk. Ready to take the risk," Chodankar said, when asked what the party stood to lose by backing Joseph Vijay's TVK and walking out on the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, its alliance partner in the state.

Within days of the April 23 election results announced on May 4, the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee and its five-member Congress Legislature Party declared full support for the TVK to form the government, citing a formal request from Vijay himself.

The speed of the decision raised eyebrows.

TVK had won 108 seats -- including two constituencies contested by Vijay personally -- in the 234-member House, leaving it ten seats short of the 118-seat majority mark. With the Congress' five MLAs added, the combined tally was still 113. The magic number was still five away.

Given Vijay's political debut there was no guarantee that the remaining pieces would fall into place giving Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar a chance to stonewall the government formation in the state.

And there is an arithmetic wrinkle that makes Vijay's situation more complicated than the raw numbers suggest. Since he won from two seats -- Perambur and Tiruchirappalli East -- he will have to vacate one, triggering a by-election.

The Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, now a crucial support partner, has already made its interest in that vacancy known. Two MLAs, a deputy CM demand, a cabinet berth -- the VCK is extracting every bit of leverage it can before putting its weight behind Vijay.

Whether the Congress paused to think through all of this before announcing its support is a question that Chodankar, unsurprisingly, did not address.

"The Congress is the oldest party in India," he told this reporter, "and when it takes a decision, it does so with a cool democratic decision."

Whether this was cool democratic deliberation or a scramble to stay relevant in a state where the Congress barely registers on the electoral map is something the coming weeks will reveal.

The Governor, The Numbers -- and a Midnight Complaint

Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar's refusal to invite Vijay to form the government despite the TVK being the single largest party in the assembly drew immediate condemnation from Congress, the Left, and eventually the VCK.

The TNCC was blunt about it: 'Governments are not decided on the lawns of Lok Bhavan. They are decided on the floor of the House.'

The Congress announced state-wide protests against the governor, accusing the BJP at the Centre of attempting to subvert the people's mandate.

Then came a twist that would have felt far-fetched even by Tamil Nadu's reliably dramatic political standards. In a high-drama midnight visit to the office of the assistant commissioner of police, Guindy range, AMMK General Secretary T T V Dhinakaran lodged a complaint accusing the TVK of submitting a forged photocopy of a support letter to Governor Arlekar -- a letter purportedly from AMMK's lone MLA-elect from Mannargudi, S Kamaraj, expressing support for Vijay's government.

The AMMK filed its complaint with the Guindy police, though no FIR had been registered as of Saturday morning.

The TVK hit back immediately. The party released a video of MLA Kamaraj, saying he had voluntarily and happily written a letter expressing support for the TVK and that he was extending support to the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam of his own free will.

Dhinakaran, meanwhile, told reporters that he had met the governor and shown him what he said was the real letter -- one that aligned the AMMK with AIADMK's CM candidate Edappadi Palaniswami, not Vijay.

One letter. Two versions. A midnight police complaint. And a lone MLA at the centre of it -- that is the kind of political quicksand into which a first-time politician, navigating his maiden electoral outing in the labyrinthine world of Dravidian coalition politics, has walked into unwittingly.

It is a reminder that in Tamil Nadu, even a single MLA can become a battlefield -- and that Vijay's road to the chief minister's chair, however short the distance may look on paper, is being contested at every step.

The VCK's high-level committee, meanwhile, signalled support for the TVK but demanded the deputy chief minister's post for its chief Thol Thirumavalavan, along with adequate Cabinet representation.

With the CPI and CPI-M -- two MLAs each -- also coming on board, Vijay's TVK finally crossed the 118-seat threshold. But the VCK's conditions are still on the table, and a party with just two MLAs demanding the deputy CM's chair is a sign of how thin Vijay's majority is -- and how much political management lies ahead for a man who, until a few years ago, was better known for his box office numbers than his numbers-crunching and negotiating skills.

High Command' Blessings?

When this reporter pressed Chodankar on whether the Congress high command had explicitly cleared the decision -- especially given Rahul Gandhi's long-standing relationship with the DMK's M K Stalin through the INDIA alliance -- he was evasive. He asked this reporter to read his press note. And his Facebook post. Everything was elaborated there, he said.

In that statement, Chodankar had framed the support in loftier terms -- invoking Perunthalaivar Kamaraj's legacy, Periyar's social justice ideals, and Dr Ambedkar's Constitutional principles.

He also made clear this was not a one-off arrangement: The alliance with TVK would extend to future local body elections, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha polls as well. A long game, then depending on whether Vijay forms the government in the state.

The Congress also attached a condition: The TVK must exclude from the alliance any 'communal forces that do not believe in the Constitution of India.'

The 2013 DMK Betrayal

The most electric moment of the conversation came when this reporter asked whether the Congress had received any flak from the DMK about being abandoned. Chodankar did not answer. He snapped instead: "What happened in 2013? What happened in 2013?"

In March 2013, DMK chief M Karunanidhi announced the party's withdrawal from the Congress-led Manmohan Singh's UPA government, furious that the Centre had failed to take a strong stand against Sri Lanka at the United Nations Human Rights Council over the alleged war crimes committed against ethnic Tamils during the island's civil war.

Karunanidhi had then publicly accused the UPA of not merely ignoring the DMK's position but of quietly diluting the US-sponsored resolution against Colombo at the UNHRC -- an unforgivable act, he said, for a party that depended on Tamil voters with deep ties to Sri Lankan Tamils.

The DMK's exit destabilised the UPA and cast a long shadow over the Congress's 2014 election campaign. Congress Spokesperson Pawan Khera, responding to the DMK's charge that the Congress had 'backstabbed' it in 2026, put it bluntly: 'I would like to take you back to December 2013, when the DMK at a press conference announced that they will fight the Lok Sabha polls alone.'

So when Chodankar asks "what happened in 2013?", he is not being cryptic for the sake of it. He is saying: we remember. And we waited. Perhaps, it's time to take revenge.

When this reporter pointed out that he was being deliberately cryptic and asked him to elaborate, Chodankar simply said: "Just check what happened in 2013."

'The People Will Decide

On whether the Congress was certain that the TVK would actually form the government -- given how fragile the majority looks and all the pulls and pushes from the two majors the DMK and AIADMK, given the VCK's conditions, given the governor's stonewalling, and now given a midnight forgery allegation involving a single precious MLA -- Chodankar was almost serene.

"It is the people of Tamil Nadu's decision. It is not your wish or mine."

It was the one moment in the conversation where he sounded less like a politician calculating odds and more like someone whose party, perhaps, already made its peace with the bet they placed on Vijay.

The Congress has thrown its weight behind a political newcomer over an old ally, jumped aboard before the numbers were fully in place, and is now watching that newcomer navigate a forgery row, a deputy CM demand, and a reluctant governor -- all at the same time.

Whether Vijay has the political spine to stitch together a stable government from this patchwork of conditions, demands, and midnight drama is the question Tamil Nadu is living through right now.

Chodankar, at least, says that the Congress is ready for the risk.