Chennai: The Chief Minister's district visit reads like a government programme, but the districts he is picking have by-elections coming.
Vijay inaugurated a new bus terminus and projects worth over Rs 60 crore in Pudukkottai on Monday, laid the foundation for works worth Rs 11.72 crore and held a roadshow. On Tuesday he was in Perundurai in Erode district, at a programme for women's self-help groups.
Pudukkottai has the Viralimalai assembly seat pending a by-election. Erode has Perundurai.
Perundurai fell vacant after AIADMK MLA S Jayakumar resigned and joined the ruling TVK. Viralimalai's AIADMK MLA and former minister C Vijayabaskar resigned and switched too; he faces corruption allegations in the gutka scam from the previous AIADMK regime.
The arithmetic sits in a 234-member assembly. TVK won 108 seats, and Vijay vacated one of the two he had won, taking the party to 107. Victories in the Dharapuram and Madurantakam by-elections have lifted it to 109. A simple majority needs 118.
The government leans on the Congress's five MLAs and two each from the VCK and the IUML. The CPI and the CPM, two MLAs each, support it from outside.
Five seats are still vacant: Viralimalai, Perundurai, Karur, Tiruchy East and Ambasamudram. Winning all five would take TVK to 114, still short of a majority on its own but far less dependent on its partners.
The two recent results carry their own signal. In Dharapuram, P Sathyabama beat the DMK's S Suganya by 9,471 votes. In Madurantakam, K Maragatham Kumaravel beat I Paranthamen by 20,040.
TVK's vote share rose from 23.23% to 37.02% in Dharapuram and from 31.32% to 39.96% in Madurantakam. The DMK's fell by only 0.42 and 1.03 percentage points, which suggests its base held even as several allies moved to the TVK-led camp. By-elections in Tamil Nadu usually hand the ruling party handsome margins; these were not that.
Revenue Minister K A Sengottaiyan said Rs 1,110 crore would be routed to women's self-help groups through various schemes, citing Vetri Payanam and Maaman Seethanam.
The travel has drawn comment too. Vijay has been using chartered aircraft for these visits, and social media has questioned the optics and the cost of flying across the state to inaugurate a bus terminus.