Vijayakanth welcomes a new member to his front in Tamil Nadu: GK Vasan's TMC

QUICK PILL

The alliance

• Vijayakanth\'s DMDK has joined hands with the MDMK, the VCK, the CPI and the CPI(M) to form a People\'s Welfare Front
• Former Union Minister GK Vasan\'s Tamil Maanila Congress has now joined hands with this Front

The arrangement

• Under the Front\'s seat-sharing agreement, TMC will contest on 26 seats
• The DMDK is fighting on 104 seats, Vaiko\'s MDMK on 29 and the other members on 25 seats each

More in the story

• The history of the TMC – from the Moopanar days to Vasan\'s revival
• Why Vijayakanth chose to make a liberal offer to this late entrant

Spurned by the AIADMK and the DMK, former Union Minister GK Vasan on Saturday, 9 April, joined the People's Welfare Front, led by actor-turned-politician Vijayakanth.

Under their seat-sharing agreement, Vasan's Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) will contest on 26 seats in next month's Tamil Nadu Assembly election, while Vijayakanth's DMDK will fight on 104 seats.

Of the other members of the six-party front, Vaiko's MDMK has been given 29 seats, while the Viduthalai Chiruthigal Katchi, the CPI and the CPI (M) will fight on 25 seats each.

Vijayakanth is said to have held Vasan's father and TMC founder GK Moopanar in high regard. He made a liberal offer to the late entrant, while being equitable with his older partners.

Moopanar's legacy

The TMC has had a chequered history over the two phases of its existence.  

The party was founded by veteran Congressman Moopanar in 1996, as a mark of revolt against the Congress's alliance with the corrupt and discredited AIADMK.  

Facing an election within days of forming the new party, Moopanar joined hands with DMK veteran M Karunanidhi, and the two swept both the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections.  

When AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa engineered the fall of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government in 1999, within a year of lending support to it, the DMK joined hands with the BJP. That's when the TMC's troubles started.

Left in the lurch, Moopanar went it alone in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, with even veterans like P Chidambaram, who was then his right-hand man, biting the dust.

The party's declining fortunes and his own failing health forced Moopanar to align with the AIADMK in 2001, defeating the very purpose for which the party had been formed.

Even then, Moopanar maintained his dignity. He did not approach Jayalalithaa; instead, she called on him at his humble house in Chennai, waving off security concerns.  

In the ensuing alliance, she allocated a certain number of seats to Moopanar, which he was free to share with the Congress. The alliance helped Jayalalithaa come back to power that year.

Soon after, Moopanar passed away, having already made up his mind to take the party back to the Congress fold. He was a staunch loyalist of Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi all his life, and even his short-lived revolt was against PV Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesari, who was the Congress president at the time.  

Once Sonia took over the reins of the party, there was no reason to keep alive his breakaway faction. The formal merger with the Congress took place after his death, and Vasan joined the UPA government as the minister for shipping.

Vasan's desperation

After the UPA lost power in the Lok Sabha to the NDA in 2014, Vasan once again broke away from the Congress and revived the TMC.

So, when the Congress aligned with the DMK for the upcoming election, it made it clear that the TMC should not be allowed into the alliance.

In desperation, Vasan knocked on Jayalalithaa's door, and she offered him 15 or so seats, on the condition that his party should contest on her party's symbol – the two leaves.

Her reasoning was simple enough – the TMC's newly-allotted symbol of a coconut grove was not well know, unlike its previous symbol, a bicycle. The AIADMK's two-leaves symbol, meanwhile, is very familiar to the people of Tamil Nadu.

But Vasan was not ready to accept this condition, as it would make his party lose its identity and become a fringe group.

The BJP, too, was not interested in having anything to do with the Congress or its offshoot, so Vasan found all doors shut.

It was then that the People's Welfare Front leaders agreed to bail him out. Vasan met the leaders of the front – Thirumavalavan, Vaiko and the two Communist leaders. They then took Vasan to Vijayakanth, where the deal was finalised.

Edited by Shreyas Sharma