| TVK seats won | Majority needed | Seats short | Assembly deadline |
| 108 Seats | 118 Seats | 10 Seats | May 10, 2026 |
Actor-turned-politician Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) emerged as the single largest party in Tamil Nadu’s assembly elections, winning 108 seats. But Vijay is still not Chief Minister. His party is 10 seats short of the 118 needed for a majority in the 234-seat assembly, and the clock is ticking.
With the current assembly’s tenure set to expire on May 10, Tamil Nadu finds itself in an unusual and tense constitutional moment. Will Vijay form government, or will the state be pushed into President’s Rule?
“TVK has staked its claim as the single largest party and requested an audience with the Governor to be invited to form the government,” a senior TVK leader said, without giving further details on the timeline.
Vijay has been holding a series of back-to-back meetings with leaders of smaller parties and independents, attempting to cobble together the numbers he needs. At the same time, Tamil Nadu Governor Ramen Deka Arlekar is reportedly exploring the legal and constitutional options available to him, including whether he must invite TVK first, or whether he can explore other combinations before making that call.
What does the constitution actually say?
In India’s parliamentary system, there is a well-established but not legally binding convention: the single largest party gets the first opportunity to form the government. The Governor’s role here is largely ceremonial but carries real discretion, especially when no party has a clear majority.
The Governor is not constitutionally obligated to invite the single largest party first. He can assess whether any party or alliance has a realistic chance of proving majority on the floor of the house. This is where the debate gets complicated, and where critics say the Governor’s delay has crossed from constitutional caution into political manoeuvring.
Is the Governor acting constitutionally or politically?
Opposition voices and constitutional experts have started asking pointed questions. The BJP, part of the NDA alliance, won just one seat in this election. The NDA as a whole managed 53 seats, with AIADMK taking 47 and BJP just one. This gives the NDA no credible mathematical claim to form the government.
The Governor’s job is to ensure a stable government, not to engineer one. If the single largest party stakes its claim, the convention is clear.
So why, critics ask, is the Governor not simply inviting Vijay to prove his majority on the floor? Tamil Nadu has a long and well-documented history of friction between state governments and centrally-appointed Governors, and many political watchers see the current standoff in that same light.
TVK and their pre-election promise collides with reality
There is another uncomfortable dimension to this crisis, one that TVK’s own supporters are grappling with. On March 18, 2026, Vijay announced that his party, TVK, would independently contest all 234 assembly seats without forming any pre-election alliances. The message to voters was confident: TVK can win on its own.
That confidence has not translated into numbers. TVK is now reaching out to the very parties it declined to ally with before the election, requesting post-poll support. This is not unusual in Indian politics, but it raises a question that critics are voicing loudly: Is this the same transactional politics that Vijay promised to leave behind?
The President’s Rule scenario
The most urgent concern right now is the May 10 deadline. If no government is formed before the current assembly’s term expires, then under Article 356 of the Constitution, President’s Rule will be imposed. This would mean the Centre, led by the BJP government, would effectively take over administration of Tamil Nadu until fresh elections or a new government is formed.
Tamil Nadu has experienced President’s Rule before. In 1976 and again in 1988, the state was placed under central rule during political crises. The memory of those episodes runs deep among Tamil voters, and the possibility of it happening under a BJP-led Centre carries significant political weight in the state.
Could DMK and AIADMK unite to block Vijay?
There is one more scenario being discussed in political circles: a theoretical grand alliance between DMK (59 seats) and AIADMK (47 seats). Together, they hold 106 seats. Backing from smaller parties and independents, they might reach the 118-seat threshold, but it highlights the long-standing rivalry between the two major Dravidian parties. Whether they would set aside decades of rivalry to keep a common rival out of power remains highly speculative at this point.
Social media fuels the TVK vs Governor battle
Away from Raj Bhavan and assembly corridors, the battle is also being fought online. TVK built much of its political machinery from Vijay’s devoted film fan clubs, and that digital army is now fully mobilised. Hashtags like #VijayForCM and #GovernorBiased are trending across Tamil Twitter and Instagram, shaping the way the standoff is perceived nationally.
Tamil Nadu is watching, and so is the rest of India. The next 48 hours could determine whether Vijay finally gets his call from Raj Bhavan, whether he manages to pull together the numbers through negotiations, or whether the state wakes up on May 11 without an elected government for the first time in decades.
