TVK Rejects Unidentified Party's '90 Seats, Vijay As Chief Minister' Offer

TVK leader Aadhav Arjuna said party boss Vijay had been offered the chief minister's post and an equal share in seats to ally with an unidentified outfit for next month's Tamil Nadu election.

Arjuna did not identify the party that made the offer, though his saying Vijay would 'not succumb to Delhi for the Chief Minister's post' has been seen by some as suggesting it was the BJP.

The TVK General Secretary only said the 'party' wanted a seat-share pact with Vijay.

But Vijay refused the offer, Arjuna thundered.

"Vijay is not (the kind of) person who will succumb to Delhi for the sake of the Chief Minister's post. They gave us all kinds of offers... from 50 to 90 seats. But all that Vijay said was that he wanted the trust of the people and not the post," he said Tuesday at a party meet in Kolathur.

This aligns with what sources in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition, the National Democratic Alliance, told NDTV on Monday - that the two sides are engaged in talks.

Sources said Vijay was offered the Deputy Chief Minister post and 55 seats.

But sources also said not everyone in the NDA was pleased with the offer.

The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam - the other major Dravidian party that has dominated Tamil Nadu politics since the 1967 election - has been vocal in its opposition.

AIADMK boss Edappadi K Palaniswami told reporters last week his party is not involved in any talks with the TVK. Insiders suggest EPS, as he is called, is wary of conceding ground to Vijay.

And there are also concerns within the AIADMK - widely viewed as a more realistic challenger to the DMK than the BJP - that the NDA expanding its ranks would eat into its seat share.

The BJP, though, believes a broader alliance is critical to stopping the DMK (which is allied with the Congress) from claiming a fourth consecutive major poll victory in the state.

Publicly the BJP has backed its ally; its state unit chief, Nainar Nagenthran, endorsed EPS' stance. Privately, sources indicate, the BJP did reach out to Vijay over a possible deal, aware certainly that movie stars are a particularly influential breed of politicians in the southern state.

The BJP is also aware that to defeat the DMK it needs to rally as broad a spectrum of anti-Stalin vote bases as possible, which even includes pushing rival factions within the AIADMK to bury the hatchet. That strategy, however, has backfired so far, with KA Sengottaiyan joining the TVK and O Panneerselvam joining Stalin's party.

Vijay, however, has made it clear in public he has no intention of aligning with any party; to underline that point the hugely popular actor dubbed the BJP his 'ideological enemy'.

The AIADMK - struggling for relevance after consecutive poll defeats to the DMK left it pinned to strongholds in western Tamil Nadu - doesn't want Vijay because it fears being eclipsed.

And Vijay has branded the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the ruling party, as his 'political enemy' suggesting there is unlikely to be any alliance with Chief Minister MK Stalin's oufit.

All of this seems to confirm what Vijay has been saying for some time now - the TVK will contest this election solo, with the actor playing to his movie star strengths and claiming the political legacies of DMK and AIADMK founders CN Annadurai and MG Ramachandran.