Annamalai factor? BJP’s Coimbatore test gets tougher

Coimbatore: The BJP might have lost out on an opportunity to project its former state president K Annamalai as a ‘young, educated and dynamic’ alternative to the Dravidian majors, some voters ET spoke to in Coimbatore felt. Several college students in Coimbatore who said they were inspired by Annamalai being a professional in politics were looking to vote for the TVK this time around as they felt they connected to actor-politician Vijay more than the older leaders from the established parties like the DMK and the AIADMK.

“I didn’t care much for the BJP as such. I liked what Annamalai was saying and so I thought of voting for the BJP,” said 24-year-old medical student M Seetha. “This time he is not contesting and I don’t feel a connection with the other candidates in the BJP so I will vote for Vijay instead.”

It isn’t just voters but also volunteers who rallied behind the BJP when Annamalai was the face of the party in the region that are taking a step back. For instance, in the MP elections in 2024, P Suresh Kumar, an entrepreneur in Singanallur near Coimbatore, gave up his work full time for six weeks solely to campaign door-to-door for Annamalai.

“I was heading about 150 volunteers in my region who were on the ground campaigning for Annamalai,” he said. “This year though I have not spent a single hour campaigning for the BJP because that motivation to work for someone like Annamalai has gone. But I know that there are still around 20 of my team members out of those 150 who are still going around Singanallur asking for votes for the BJP.”

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Another volunteer Suryaprabha Natarajan from Gounderpalayam, however, differed. She said that she was continuing to campaign for the BJP as she believed in the party. “If someone is not campaigning for the BJP just because one person has not been given a seat, it is not right,” she said. “The party comes above all else and we are seeing that even Annamalai anna is going all out campaigning for the party.” However, political analysts like Sumanth C Raman believe that it wasn’t a misstep by the BJP as it is the junior partner in the alliance.
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“The problem was he was not getting along with the AIADMK,” he said. “The AIADMK is the senior partner. If Annamalai had a good equation with the AIADMK, it would have been a win-win for everybody. Unfortunately, he was dead against the alliance but fortunately, they have convinced him now and the alliance is doing well,” Raman added.