Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi founder and Chidambaram MP Thol. Thirumavalavan is facing a dilemma whether to join Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay’s cabinet or not after extending outside support to the single largest party, TVK.
Party sources said that while Mr. Thirumavalavan does not want to formally join the state government, party officials are urging him to reconsider.
Acknowledging that the Congress’s decision to leave the DMK alliance and join the Vijaya government effectively ended the INDIA bloc, sources said the VCK leadership believes the significant drop it faced in the polls can be attributed to it playing a supportive role to the DMK in the past five years on contentious caste issues. This created an impression that the party was not protecting the interests of SC/ST.
Sources claimed that TVK is pushing Mr. Thirumavalavan to join the Cabinet and lend his experience and wisdom to the largely inexperienced, first-time legislators.
Still, Mr. Thirumavalavan is said to be reluctant to accept the offer. But many inside feel that the “golden opportunity” should not be wasted.
VCK general secretary D. Ravikumar said in X’s May 10 post that there was a larger question of whether the “broader political opposition to the BJP” might be weakening due to the TVK government operating with a narrow majority and the disintegration of the DMK-Congress alliance. This raised questions about the need to maintain their anti-BJP stance.
“If a ruling dispensation operating with a fragile majority chooses to avoid a direct confrontation with the Union government, its opposition to the BJP will inevitably weaken. Moreover, anti-BJP sentiment within the DMK camp itself may begin to lose steam, shaped by an emerging internal question: Now that the Congress is no longer our ally, is it still necessary to resist the BJP with the same intensity as the BJP before? In the electoral arena, the broader political opposition may nevertheless start to weaken,” he said.
Published – 11 May 2026 21:38 IST
