Annamalai plans 3-month break for UK fellowship, aides say no link to poll defeat

The Chevening Gurukul Fellowship for Leadership and Excellence, a programme designed for “young leaders and mid-career professionals with notable leadership potential”, begins in mid-September and concludes in December. Annamalai has reportedly approached the high command for permission to accept the fellowship.

Annamalai had led a high-profile Lok Sabha campaign in Tamil Nadu, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior BJP leaders making frequent visits to the state which the party has been nurturing for long. Annamalai, an IPS officer-turned-politician, who was chosen to head the Tamil Nadu BJP unit over several senior leaders, lost from his own seat of Coimbatore.

PM Narendra Modi with Union MoS L Murugan (left) and BJP state chief K Annamalai in Tamil Nadu’s Salem. (PTI)

However, sources said, the party has not lost faith in the 39-year-old leader, whose aggressive style is believed to have prepared a solid ground for the BJP in Tamil Nadu. In 12 of the state’s 39 Lok Sabha seats, the BJP-led NDA finished second, pushing the AIADMK to the third position.

A BJP leader said Annamalai was keen to take up the fellowship, and sees it as a break that will help him recharge his batteries after the polls and his statewide foot-march, ‘Enn Mann, Enn Makkal’, preceding them. An Annamalai aide said: “An average politician spends his life, from dawn to dusk, clad in white, visiting weddings, attending funerals, temples, and party meetings. Annamalai wants to be different. He believes this break will be helpful in the larger scheme of things.”

A BJP leader said the break should not be seen as a post-result message. “This is Annamalai’s own decision, not the party seeking to rehabilitate him, or sending him away.”

At the same time, the leader admitted that Annamalai has been “a little unhappy” about many things, “including the lack of cooperation from senior leaders” and the general support both in the state unit and among central leaders that the BJP should contest the 2026 Assembly polls in an alliance.

Annamalai has been pushing for the BJP to contest alone, and his remarks attacking AIADMK leader and former chief minister J Jayalalithaa were one of the main provocations behind the latter breaking its ties with the party ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

The Chevening Gurukul Fellowship, offered by the United Kingdom’s Foreign Office, is a 12-week residential course at the University of Oxford. Annamalai reportedly applied for the fellowship earlier this year and attended an interview in Delhi in May.