TVK's Rajya Sabha seat gift for Congress goes to Praveen Chakravarty. Here's why Vijay is backing him

THe united states congress on th released its lean of candidates for Rajya Sabha polls which ar go down to be held on June 18, and it named a leader who can win only if Tamil Nadu's TVK backs him. While the Congress does not have enough seats of its own to make Praveen Chakravarty win, the party leader is the beneficiary of what can be seen as a gift by chief minister C Jospeh Vijay's TVK to the Grand Old Party.Vijay is essentially paying back for the Congress support in forming the state government, and Chakravarty has been a big backer of the alliance. So much so, that he has said he wanted a pre-election alliance rather than waiting for the poll results to break with the DMK.Chakravarty heads the Congress's Data Analytics and Professionals Wing. Before the Congress released its list of candidates on Thursday, CM Vijay allotted the lone Tamil Nadu Rajya Sabha seat to the party, a significant gesture that highlighted the growing bonhomie between the two parties. TVK is even being seen as a potential new constituent of Congress-led INDIA bloc at the Centre, though the DMK has already showed signs of leaving it.Following the RS candidate list announcement, Chakravarty expressed gratitude to both the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, and Tamil Nadu CM Vijay. He called himself “the first MP candidate of the Tamil Nadu Social Justice Progressive Alliance (TVK INC VCK IUML CPI CPM)”.He further said that, if elected, he would carry the mandate of alliance workers into Parliament and assured that he would serve as an "honest" voice of the Tamil people in the House.The man behind the unusual allianceWhen Vijay's TVK struggled to have the requisite numbers to form a stable government in Tamil Nadu last month, the Congress was the first party to extend its support with five MLAs.Over the course of next few days, smaller parties like CPI, CPI(M), IUML and VCK joined in and Vijay took oath as CM on May 10.The coalition wasn't justs a post-poll decision, according to Chakravarty, who said in an interview with the Rediff that the majority of Tamil Nadu Congress workers favoured an alliance with the TVK even before the polls.Notably, he said that he a “role” to play in the formation of the alliance.When asked why the Congress abandoned its partnership with the DMK, Chakravarty said in that interview that the TVK's secular ideology was much like the Congress's, and that Vijay was a “rising face”.However, the bonhomie might have cost the Congress its INDIA bloc ally, the MK Stalin-led DMK, as the party announced to skip the June 8 meeting of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, citing the sentiment of cadre and supporters after the “betrayal” of the Congress.