CHENNAI: Having weaned away 28 of AIADMK’s 47 MLAs from party general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami, the C Ve Shanmugam-S PVelumani faction is nursing the idea of joining the Vijayled govt after supporting the confidence vote in the Tamil Nadu assembly today.While the group claims to have struck a deal with TVK to get “five or six” ministerial berths, TVK sources said Vijay has made no commitment. An AIADMK MLA said Vijay spoke to Shanmugam a few days ago. “We are joining the govt, he told TOI. “The number of ministers will be decided later.” A TVK minister, however, denied this.
The TVK minister said Vijay has welcomed the AIADMK faction’s support, “though we are not in need of it to win the vote of confidence”. Moreover, such a move would upset VCK, IUML, and the Left parties that have supported TVK, he said. Some members of the Shanmugam group said Vijay visiting Shanmugam’s office on Tuesday has prompted several fence-sitters to move towards them.The rival factions appointed their own “whips” – C Vijayabaskar for the Shanmugam camp and Agri S S Krishnamoorthy for the EPS side — and sent out emails to MLAs — one section asking them to vote in favour of the motion and the other against. The EPS camp maintained that it had submitted letters of support from all 47 MLAs, while the Shanmugam camp, which “elected” S P Velumani as legislature party leader, sent an objection lettertoSpeakerJCDPrabhakardisputing EPS’s claim.“The signatures were obtained for some other reason, when the MLAs were staying in a resort in Puducherry. We never gave a letter supporting EPS as legislature party leader. We have submitted a letter of support from around 30 MLAs to the Speaker recognising S P Velumani as our legislature party leader,” said an MLA close to Shanmugam.The Speaker will have to conduct an inquiry before deciding on the letters. “There is no question of the anti-defection law kicking in as the legislature party has not yet been recognised,” said a Shanmugam camp leader.The anti-defection law says legislators of a party who switch loyalties will be disqualified unless the party merges with the other party with at least two thirds of its MLAs agreeing to the merger.
