CHENNAI: VCK president Thol Thirumavalavan on Saturday said that while his personal preference was to extend outside support to the TVK government, he agreed to his party entering the cabinet after a majority of the cadre had demanded it. He also clarified that he took the decision only after securing DMK president M K Stalin’s consent.
Thirumavalavan said the overwhelming demand from within the party left him with no choice but to fall in line with the collective decision.
“I had made it clear from the beginning that I was not in favour of joining the government. That remains my personal position,” Thirumavalavan said, adding that the final call to join the TVK government was taken only after exhaustive internal deliberations that lasted over two and a half hours in the party’s high-level committee.
Hitting out at critics, Thirumavalavan said that casteist and communal forces had made a concerted effort to provoke him, stoke his emotions, and target him on social media for the past two years.
“We did not yield. We did not buckle. I did everything I could to retain the Secular Progressive Alliance,” he said.
Speaking to the media, Thirumavalavan also recalled how he had stood firmly by the DMK alliance ahead of the election, supporting Stalin to the best of his ability.
However, after the results, he said he lacked the power to prevent the decisions taken by the Congress, the communist parties, or the Indian Union Muslim League. “I am not the alliance convenor. I do not have the authority to stop the decisions of alliance parties,” he said.
When asked if he would contest the upcoming local body polls and Lok Sabha elections as part of the DMK or the TVK, he dismissed the question as “speculative”.
Thirumavalavan said, “Such hypothetical queries were only meant to be twisted and used to slander party. There is no room for speculative questions.”