CHENNAI: The ruling TVK government is poised for its first Cabinet expansion on Thursday, barely days after Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay and his 9 ministers assumed office, with the exercise emerging as a crucial political balancing act involving alliance management, regional representation and internal power equations.
Highly placed sources said the final list of ministers was in the last stage of consultation and is expected to be cleared ahead of the swearing-in ceremony likely to be held at Lok Bhavan on Thursday morning. Governor in-charge Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar is expected to arrive in Chennai on Wednesday evening.
The Vijay-led administration is learnt to have decided to accommodate Congress legislators in the ministry while decisively backing away from the idea of inducting MLAs belonging to the AIADMK faction led by former minister S P Velumani and C Ve Shanmugham.
The move follows sustained resistance from the Congress, Left parties and VCK, all of whom conveyed strong reservations over any attempt to share ministerial space with legislators aligned to the AIADMK camp.
"We never officially discussed inducting AIADMK legislators into the Cabinet. Their support during the confidence vote was political support extended on the floor of the House and nothing beyond that, " a senior minister told DT Next.
Sources within the ruling establishment, however, admitted that legal advisors and alliance partners had cautioned the leadership against a politically risky experiment that could trigger a possible instability at the very outset of the government's tenure.
Inside the TVK, the Cabinet exercise has triggered intense lobbying among first-time MLAs and influential party functionaries. Dr Radhakrishnan Nagar MLA N Marie Wilson, Sholinganallur MLA ECR P Saravanan, Srirangam MLA S Ramesh, Aranthangi MLA J Mohamed Farvas, Tiruppur North MLA V Sathyabama, Salem South MLA A Vijay Tamilan Parthiban, Coimbatore North MLA V Sampathkumar, Maduravoyal MLA Rhevanth Charan, Tirunelveli MLA R S Murughan, Radhapuram MLA Sathish Christopher, Thanjavur MLA R Vijaysaravanan, Sholavandan MLA M V Karuppaiah and Madurai Central MLA Madhar Badhurudeen are among those aggressively seeking berths.
Senior organisational figures, including N Anand, John Arockiyasamy and Aadhav Arjuna, are also understood to be playing a key role in the final round of consultations.
The leadership is learnt to be weighing community arithmetic, district representation, organisational influence and electoral performance while finalising the list. With the party lacking MLAs in at least eight districts, the government is also expected to appoint ministers-in-charge to oversee administrative coordination in those regions.
Congress MLAs S Rajeshkumar and P Viswanathan are likely to be inducted into the ministry as part of the alliance-sharing arrangement.