CHENNAI: After remaining on the margins of Tamil Nadu political landscape for 59 long years, during which it played largely insignificant roles, the Congress will return to the Tamil Nadu Cabinet, with the induction of Rajesh Kumar and P Vishwanathan on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the VCK and IUML, both DMK allies which had extended unconditional support enabling the TVK government led by Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay to come to power, indicated on Wednesday that they, too, would join the government.
Sources told DT Next that besides the two Congress MLAs, 21 TVK legislators would also take oath as ministers, which would take the strength of the Cabinet to 32 – leaving two vacancies.
The Congress’s national leadership announced on Wednesday that Rajesh Kumar and Vishwanathan would join the Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay-led Cabinet. Though it was known that the party would join the government, the final decision took its time coming, as there was intense lobbying within the party for ministerial berths.
Earlier in the day, responding to TVK leader and Minister Aadhav Arjuna’s renewed appeal to join the government, VCK president Thol Thirumavalavan said the high-level committee of the party would discuss the matter and decide.
Stating that participation in governance was also part of its political ideology, Thirumavalavan said his party extended support, without any preconditions, despite the TVK requiring the support of the two VCK MLAs to form the government.
He thanked Minister Arjuna for publicly reiterating the TVK’s desire that the VCK should be part of the government, and added that the ruling party assured that rebel AIADMK legislators would not be accommodated in the Cabinet.
Meanwhile, the political advisory committee of the Indian Union Muslim League has recommended that the party join the government. The formal decision will be taken by the party’s Tamil Nadu high-level committee on Thursday. Addressing reporters on Wednesday, IUML national president KM Kader Mohideen said the TVK leadership had, over the past few days, invited the IUML to join the Cabinet. Calling it an “unexpected gesture of magnanimity”, he said the party had referred the matter to its national political advisory committee headed by Kerala IUML president Sayyid Sadiq Ali Shihab Thangal. “The political advisory committee met this morning and informed us that there is no objection to the IUML joining the Cabinet,” he said. Like Thirumavalavan, Mohideen stressed that the party had extended unconditional support to the TVK to prevent political instability and the possibility of Governor’s rule in Tamil Nadu after no single party secured a clear majority in the Assembly elections.