Twenty-four hours before the BJP announced its list of candidates for Tamil Nadu, its former state president, K Annamalai had dropped a broad hint that his name would not figure in the list. ”On April 23, I will work as a booth level agent for Arun Kumar, the AIADMK candidate in Kavundampalayam in Coimbatore,” he had told a group of visiting AIADMK leaders.
Annamalai had given enough indications that he wished to stay out of the contest as his father was ailing, and he needed to tend to him. But his army of supporters lived in hope, hoping that the national leadership would not let its leader down a second time. Exactly a year ago, Annamalai had been replaced by Nainar Nagendran in a bid to mollify Edappadi Palaniswami and the AIADMK leadership, who had quit the NDA in 2023 upset over Annamalai’s remarks on CN Annadurai. Despite Annamalai injecting vigour into the otherwise comatose state BJP – tripling the 3.6 percent vote share in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections to 11.2 percent in 2024 – he was sacrificed to reset the ties with the AIADMK. The argument then was that while the jump under his command was impressive, it had not translated into a single seat, and it needed the more affable leadership of Nagendran to work in sync with Palaniswami.
The hopes of his fans were dashed as the BJP list released on April 3, barely three days before nominations close, did not include Annamalai’s name. That was not all. The four leaders accused by Annamalai’s supporters on social media platforms of blocking his chances have been fielded by the party. They are party chief Nainar Nagendran, Coimbatore (South) MLA Vanathi Srinivasan, Union minister of State L Murugan and former Telangana governor Tamilisai Soundararajan. Despite Annamalai vowing support to the BJP candidates after the release of the list, his admirers are vocal in expressing their disappointment and this does not bring credit to the image of a disciplined unit the party likes to project.
At the heart of the inordinate delay in announcing the names of the candidates is what is being referred to as the Coimbatore deadlock. Rewind to March 23 when Edappadi Palaniswami and Piyush Goyal had jointly announced that the BJP would contest 27 assembly seats. The devil was in the details as admirers of Annamalai soon realised that only one seat in Coimbatore district had been allocated to the BJP. The miserliness of the AIADMK was not the only decision that upset them. Coimbatore (South), which was Vanathi Srinivasan’s constituency, had been taken by the AIADMK, and it had allocated Coimbatore (North) to the saffron party.
With only one seat in Tamil Nadu’s industrial capital available, Team Srinivasan obviously wanted the sitting MLA to move from South to North while those rooting for Annamalai pointed to his second place position in the Lok Sabha election from Coimbatore. In 2024, Annamalai had lost by 1.18 lakh votes to the DMK candidate but, more significantly, pushed the AIADMK candidate to the third position. There was speculation that an arrangement of musical chairs between Murugan, Srinivasan and Annamalai was on the table. Under this formula, Annamalai would have contested from Coimbatore (North), Murugan from Avanashi and Srinivasan would have been sent to the Rajya Sabha in place of Murugan. In the end, this proposal was junked and Annamalai was kept out.
Incidentally, just a couple of days ago, Nagendran had told reporters that Annamalai’s name figured in the list sent to New Delhi. This now leads to doubts if the central leadership decided to jinx his candidature and keep him free to campaign for all the candidates across Tamil Nadu as a floating asset.
What does this delay and confusion mean for the BJP’s chances in the assembly election?
Precious time lost because ally Palaniswami and rivals MK Stalin and Vijay have been on the campaign trail for over a week now. While Annamalai, as one of the star campaigners, would no longer be tied down to a constituency in Coimbatore, the flip side is that his absence from the ballot may lead to a drop in voter enthusiasm among the youth who saw him as the face of a new brand of BJP politics in Tamil Nadu. It allows the DMK to taunt the IPS officer-turned-politician that he was afraid to face Coimbatore after the loss in 2024. With another leading light of the NDA, TTV Dhinakaran, too opting out of the contest, the optics do not look great.
On the other hand, the BJP would largely depend on the AIADMK to do the heavy lifting in most constituencies, barring Coimbatore. With seasoned veterans like Murugan (Avanashi) and Soundararajan (Mylapore) in the fray, it signals a return to the traditional BJP leadership in Tamil Nadu, diluting the aggressive and disruptive brand that had been built under Annamalai’s watch. This could lead to better synergy with the AIADMK.
What does the move to keep Annamalai out of the electoral race mean for his political future?
A temporary blip at best. The fact that AIADMK candidates and leaders in Coimbatore are seeking his support, shows that despite the differences in the past, they acknowledge his ability to connect with the electorate. They know that he commands enormous goodwill in Coimbatore and other urban pockets. In an election where the youthful persona of Vijay is proving to be the X-factor, the NDA needs Annamalai to counter Thalapathy’s star appeal.
With less than three weeks to go for the elections, the BJP can afford to look at the glass half full. One, because the other national party, the Congress, took a similar amount of time to announce its candidates, only to renominate most of its sitting MLAs in the end. Two, because the lotus does not bloom in clear waters. Now that the confusion and the delay has muddied the waters a bit, the BJP can hope for better returns compared to 2021, when it won four seats in the Tamil Nadu assembly.
