Chennai: Tamil Nadu is set into the coalition governance era with Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay expected to expand his Cabinet on Thursday giving berths among others to nominees of the Congress, his party’s post-poll ally. This would see the return of the Congress to governance in the State after it was uprooted from power 59 years ago.
In 1967, the DMK under the leadership of C N Annadurai, ousted the Congress form power in Tamil Nadu emerging as the first regional party in India to capture power in a State. The Congress thereafter could never return to power in Tamil Nadu as M G Ramachandran, after being expelled from the DMK had formed the AIADMK in 1972, following which the political landscape turned bipolar dominated by the two Dravidian parties.
The Congress, which fought the recent Assembly elections in the company of the DMK, had jettisoned the party soon after the elections threw a fractured mandate and rushed to join hands with Vijay’s TVK.
Congress national general secretary K C Venugopal on Wednesday announced in Delhi that the party president Mallikarjun Kharge had approved the induction in the Cabinet of Congress Legislature Party leader Rajesh Kumar and legislator P Vishwanathan, a Scheduled Caste leader who won in the general constituency of Melur. “They will be taking oath as Ministers tomorrow (Thursday). This is a historic occasion for us, as the Congress joins the Tamil Nadu cabinet after a long gap of 59 years,” he said.
The IUML, another party which had contested as part of the DMK front but extended support to the TVK government later, would decide on Thursday on whether to join the Vijay Cabinet. The Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi too shall decide later.
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The Cabinet expansion will also see the inclusion of several TVK legislators as Ministers.
Tamil Nadu has never had a coalition government as the electorate, since 1952, had always decisively voted for one party or an alliance. In 2006, the DMK alliance had secured a majority but the Dravidian party had secured only 96 seats, way behind the 118 majority mark. Yet, then Chief Minister M Karunanidhi had managed to run his Government with outside support of the Congress and PMK for five years.
