Midnight SOS, chartered flight from Goa: How Abhishek Manu Singhvi played a vital role in TVK govt formation

Just ahead of Vijay's oath-taking as TN chief minister, TVK faced an emergency. A petition was hastily filed to stop a party MLA who had won by one vote from voting in the confidence motion, being scheduled for hearing on Sunday morning. In the close numbers game, one MLA seemed worth a million. Something had to be done urgently.

Frantic calls were made on Saturday night to Congress legal eagle Abhishek Singhvi, who was in Goa. A chartered flight was arranged in Bengaluru, which reached Goa only at 8am on Sunday. Singhvi managed to land in Chennai just in the nick of time, argued the case, but, in the process, missed swearing-in ceremony of the superstar, for which he was specially invited.





Singhvi, a man for all seasons, is learnt to have been advising Vijay and TVK ever since they got into election campaign, and after the latter emerged as single largest party with 108 MLAs but had to reckon with a governor who insisted on letters of support of 118 MLAs (the majority mark).

Those in the know claim that Singhvi provided crucial inputs during stalemate that spanned the legal and the political: that TVK should continue to insist on right of the single largest party to be invited to form govt while cobbling up numbers to reach majority mark; and that the party needed a buffer of at least five MLAs because of unforeseen hurdles that rivals could create. The advice paid off. Besides, the veteran lawyer was on TV advocating TVK's cause and criticising governor for his stance.

Sources said Singhvi came in touch with TVK through now minister Aadhav Arjuna, whose case he had fought during power tussles of the basketball association.

But the most intriguing, if interesting, part of this relationship surfaced after the Karur stampede. Arjuna had fired an angry tweet over it, for which he was booked, while TVK-Vijay faced a case over the stampede. Singhvi was sought by both TVK and DMK govt to fight the cases. Singhvi agreed to take up Arjuna's tweet case while handling DMK's stampede case. But the two parties, archrivals by then, did not suspect the lawyer's fairness. Finally, as Congress left DMK to join TVK after the results, Singhvi appeared to lead from the front.