In Tamil Nadu, BJP’s final frontier, a high-stakes battle
Thuglak, a Tamil political magazine. Political pundits are not clear if the groundswell for BJP in Tamil Nadu is large enough to secure one or more seats in the coming general elections—the state will vote on 19 April. If the party does manage to do so, it would have crossed the final frontier in its drive to become a truly national party.
The last time a national party put up a strong fight in Tamil Nadu was in 1967 when the Indian National Congress lost and DMK came to power in the state. Ever since, Tamil Nadu has been in the stranglehold of Dravidian parties, DMK and AIADMK. Congress’ clout progressively weakened and over time, it began to piggyback on either of the Dravidian parties to bag a few parliamentary seats.
Today, it is a junior partner in the DMK-led alliance. Its vote share in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections (in alliance with DMK) was 13%. “Till 1973, the anti-DMK votes went to Congress.
But after actor M.G. Ramachandran broke away from DMK and floated AIADMK, he started getting those votes. It stayed with AIADMK," said Gurumurthy.
This may be changing now. “BJP has risen to a position where it will now get the anti-DMK votes," he added. BJP rose partly by accident and partly on account of conscious efforts it made.
The accident part first. In the last two elections—the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and 2021 state assembly polls—BJP aligned with AIADMK. “This time, too, we were keen on continuing the alliance.
But, the AIADMK leadership chose to part ways," said K.T. Raghavan, former general secretary of BJP in Tamil Nadu. The relationship between the two parties soured after the leader of BJP’s state unit, K.
Annamalai, attacked two Dravidian stalwarts—C.N. Annadurai and J. Jayalalithaa.
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