Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) has called for a meeting of all its post-poll alliance partners on September 9 in Chennai. Vijay will chair the second meeting, which will discuss and draft a Common Minimum Programme (CMP) and a name for the post-poll alliance under the TVK.
The second meeting comes at a time when the Congress and the TVK are on a different page in projecting Rahul Gandhi as the Prime minister candidate in the 2029 Lok Sabha elections. While the TVK wants to project Vijay as the probable candidate for the prime ministerial race, the Congress has not agreed to this.
The TVK has extended formal invitations to the Congress, IUML, VCK, MDMK and the two Left parties, CPI and CPI (M), on formalising the existing alliance in the state and name the alliance. The Congress, IUML and the VCK which are part of the three-month-old ruling coalition will attend the meeting. The TVK has already reached out to the Left parties and MDMK general secretary Vaiko, extending formal invitations to participate in the meeting. On Saturday (September 5, 2026), senior TVK leaders, including Ministers N. Anand and Aadhav Arjuna, met Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president B. Manickam Tagore and Rajya Sabha MP Praveen Chakravarty at Satyamurthy Bhavan, the headquarters of the TNCC, to extend a formal invitation.
Later, they met VCK president Thol. Thirumavalavan at the party headquarters in Ashok Nagar. They also IUML national president K.M. Khader Mohideen and invited him to the second meeting.
Incidentally, the Left parties who have refused to join the ruling TVK government, may not be part of the meeting. The communists have already informed that they are extending only outside support to the TVK solely with an intention to prevent the state getting into President’s rule. The Congress confirmed its participation. “The TVK ministers came and met us. They asked the Tamil Nadu Congress to attend the meeting of TVK alliance party leaders on September 9 at 4 pm. Congress will attend the second TVK alliance meeting,” TNCC president Manickam Tagore said. But Tagore reiterated that Rahul Gandhi will be the party’s prime ministerial candidate, when asked about TVK’s pitch for Vijay as PM. “I am again saying clearly that in the 2029 Parliament election, our leader Rahul Gandhi will be the PM candidate. Any attempt to create differences within the alliance would not succeed,” Tagore clarified.
However, the TVK ministers and its social media handles continue to project Vijay as the PM face for the 2029 elections. While it is expected that the Congress will press for Rahul as PM face, the second meeting is also expected to deliberate on the Congress’s stance in taking the TVK into the INDIA bloc. A few days before Tagore had said that TVK is not part of the INDIA bloc as it doesn’t have members in the parliament.
However, the timing of the meeting seems to be crucial as it will be a held a day after the budget session of the assembly comes to a close and a day before Vijay leaves for London to woo foreign investors. According to sources, the meeting has been convened at a time, when the TVK is facing severe pressure over the government's wafer-thin majority. TVK has only 107 MLAs and is running on support from two legislators from the VCK, five from the Congress and two from the IUML who are part of the cabinet. The two left parties with two MLAs each are extending support from outside to the TVK.
Sources say that the TVK leadership is under constant threat of losing the majority as it feels that the alliance partners might withdraw support at anytime. In fact, the TVK’s measures to ensure that the bypolls are held to all the seven constituencies that fell vacant because of AIADMK MLAs resigning is also hanging in balance. The election commission has announced bypolls to just two constituencies as election cases are pending in the five others, including Trichy (East), the second seat won by Vijay and vacated later.
One of the Congress ministers had recently threatened to resign as the “Vijay for PM” rhetoric began gaining strength within the TVK circles and social media.
