TVK Not Ruling out Vijay as PM Candidate in 2029
The TVK had not joined the INDIA bloc till now and its strategy for the Lok Sabha elections has not been revealed
Chennai: After the release of surveys giving 9 percent of popular support to Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay for the Prime Minister post, Congress leader and Higher Education minister P. Viswanathan on Sunday asserted that his party leader Rahul Gandhi would be their Prime minister candidate.
However, Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK) ministers K.A. Sengottaiyan and C.T.R. Nirmal Kumar did not rule out their party projecting Joseph Vijay for the Prime Minister post raising questions if the TVK is planning to follow the 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign of former Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa projected herself as the PM nominee and won 37 Lok Sabha seats.
While regional allies like Vaiko’s MDMK and Thol. Thirumavalavan’s VCK and IUML are unlikely to object to such a campaign and continue in the TVK front, the Congress which wants to project Rahul Gandhi would have problems in continuing in the alliance. The TVK had not joined the INDIA bloc till now and its strategy for the Lok Sabha elections has not been revealed.
While the TVK is carrying out a relentless campaign in north India and posting reels on social media to project Vijay as a national leader, a survey by a television channel has released a survey saying Vijay is in the third place with 9.2 per cent support in the preferred Prime Minister’s choice next to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi.
Commenting on the survey, minister Viswanathan of the Congress asserted that Rahul Gandhi would be the Prime Minister candidate, and he could defeat Narendra Modi. However, Revenue minister Sengottaiyan who met the media at the Coimbatore airport said a regional party is different from a national party. However, he did not rule out projecting Joseph Vijay as the Prime Minister candidate in the 2029 Lok Sabha elections saying the TVK leader’s ideas and plans are aimed at providing a clean government and this made him a leader at the national level, adding what happens in future could not be determined now.
Law minister C.T.R. Nirmal Kumar, addressing the media at Madurai said a national survey had come out saying Joseph Vijay is in the third place in the race for Prime Minister but he could speak only about decisions taken by his leader, indicating that a strategy including projecting Rahul Gandhi for PM had not been worked out till now.
Congress supporters who spoke in television debates alleged that the survey was a conspiracy by the BJP to drive a wedge between the TVK and Congress and a bid to divert the growing opposition to the BJP among the youth in north India. However, such surveys boost TVK’s bargaining power in the Lok Sabha elections with the Congress which could be hoping to get a higher number of seats from the TVK in the 2029 polls.
The DMK and AIADMK are forming a tie-up with the Congress or BJP since they could not project their leaders as Prime Minister candidates. Former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa broke this trend by projecting herself as the Prime Minister nominee in 2014 and won 37 seats. The TVK also has the option of forming an alliance with other allies which accept Joseph Vijay as the Prime Minister candidate and win as many seats as possible to play a decisive role after the election results.