A Marriage Of Inconvenience

The Congress’ story was no different. Old war horse Vazhapadi Ramamurthy, who recently merged his one-man Tamizhaga Rajiv Congress with the Congress (from which it had once split), was served a showcause notice by state unit president Elangovan. Significantly, Vazhapadi called on Jayalalitha a few days before the merger. Elangovan had hoped that the merger would make the Congress the second-largest party in the assembly with 30 MLAs (TMC’s 23 and the Congress’ seven), one more than the DMK’s 29. However, after the split the supposedly united Congress has only 25 MLAs to boast of.