Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay on Wednesday won the floor test in the state Assembly in Chennai — formally sealing his government's majority three days after being sworn in.
TVK won the trust vote with 144 ‘ayes', 22 ‘noes' and five ‘abstaining'. Those who voted in favour of the motion included AIADMK rebels.
The TVK coalition comfortably crossed the 117-vote threshold needed in the effective 232-member House, as the DMK staged a walkout and the AIADMK split down the middle in a trust vote that laid bare the new fault lines of Tamil Nadu politics.
Following the discussion on the Confidence Motion, Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay rises to give his reply and says that his government would certainly be “secular”.
“This government will function with the speed of a horse and not indulge in horse trading,” Vijay said. A pointed reference to the frantic coalition negotiations that had preceded his swearing-in and accusations of political poaching that had dogged the week leading up to the floor test.
He also assures that all earlier government schemes will be continued by his government.
The Numbers That Delivered the Win
TVK entered the floor test with 106 voting legislators — the party's 108 elected MLAs minus Vijay's resignation from Trichy East and the Speaker, who does not vote.
Congress declared support with 5 MLAs; CPI, CPI(M), VCK, and IUML — with 2 MLAs each — announced their outside support, taking the TVK coalition's tally to 119.
An additional 31 AIADMK MLAs led by senior leaders C.V. Shanmugam and S.P. Velumani — constituting two-thirds of the party's legislature group, thereby shielding them from anti-defection provisions — declared support for Vijay.
AMMK's lone MLA S. Kamaraj also backed the government. Whereas, BJP's M. Bhojarajan, the party's lone MLA in the House said that the party will be maintaining neutrality in the confidence motion.
Who Voted Against and Who Stayed Out
Leader of the Opposition Udhayanidhi Stalin announced that DMK members would walk out during the confidence motion — and they did, staging a floor exit rather than voting against.
“You do not have the 118 seats required for a majority. Furthermore, due to a lack of confidence in winning, the Chief Minister contested in two constituencies and resigned from one. He has not even thanked the people yet,” Leader of Opposition Stalin said during the trust vote.
AIADMK General Secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami declared all 47 of his party's MLAs would vote against the motion. PMK chose to abstain from voting.
Meanwhile, a last-minute legal complication saw TVK MLA R. Seenivasa Sethupathy barred from voting by the Madras High Court — his seat had been won by a single vote — but the coalition's margin was wide enough to absorb the setback.
How A Two-Year-Old Party Got Here
TVK, founded just two years ago, won 108 of Tamil Nadu's 234 assembly seats on April 23, ending a 59-year Dravidian duopoly in the state. Short of the majority mark, Vijay pursued coalition partners from within the DMK-led Secular Progressive Alliance — bringing Congress into the government and securing outside support from the Left parties, VCK, and IUML — before being sworn in as the state's ninth Chief Minister on May 10.
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