Knives out in Tamil Nadu BJP over poll debacle

As far as the BJP was concerned, Annamalai remained the best choice to wrest Coimbatore, a long-time Sangh Parivar bastion from which party veteran CP Radhakrishnan was elected twice in the last two decades.

An early laboratory of Hindutva in the entire south, Coimbatore had sharp communal polarisations in the past, creating a fertile land for the BJP to expand its influence. A traditional stronghold of AIADMK, the second largest city in Tamil Nadu, Coimbatore, has very few pockets of influence for the DMK.

However, when the results were out, the party could not secure a single seat among the 39 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state. Now, Tamil Nadu is the lone southern state where the BJP does not hold a toehold.

Political observers said this is an indication of an untimely eclipse of the Annamalai phenomenon, which created waves in favour of the BJP by pushing hard an aggressive Hindutva but failed to translate that into electoral victory.

"The election has proved once again the DMK's ability to keep the state a fortress against aggressive Hindutva politics. People, in general, approved the relatively fewer soap operas involved in the campaigning of the DMK alliance, and the strategies of Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, including rallying together Congress and left parties along with outfits representing minorities and Dalits favouring his party, paid dividends. The larger secular alliance has made it impossible for the BJP to permeate the state,'' observed M. Lakshmanan, a political observer and a former faculty member of the Madras Institute of Developmental Studies (MIDS).

According to him, BJP's biggest setback in the entire south had occurred in Coimbatore, where Ganapathy Rajkumar, a little-known local leader of DMK, defeated Annamalai by a margin of 1,14,000 votes.

``It was a fight inimical to that of the biblically humble David versus the mighty Goliath, and the ultimate victory went in favour of David,'' said Lakshmanan.

Though the BJP emerged as the runner-up in certain constituencies across the state, even party insiders now feel that it failed to achieve the desired results of the high-decibel campaign in which Annamalai enjoyed stardom status.

In the post-poll situation, Annamalai's opponents in the party state unit have sided with senior party leader and former Telangana governor Tamilisai Soundararajan and launched a covert social media campaign to disparage the young leader who has received approval from the national leadership to continue as state president for now.

Soundararajan, who was defeated in Chennai South, used social media platforms to blame Annamalai for the party's poor performance.

A video footage, which went viral, showed Union home minister Amit Shah calling Soundararajan to his side on the dais at the oathtaking of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandra Babu Naidu. Annamalai’s supporters termed it a warning by Shah against her continuing tirade against Annamalai.

"By all indications, more troubles are ahead for Annamalai, with his enemies in and outside the party targeting him specifically for the poor show despite taller claims. The biggest shortcoming of his campaigning was that it lacked resonance with any political style prevalent in Tamil Nadu for long and was mostly a simple copy of high-decibel electioneering of the BJP in north India,” said Madurai-based rights activist and political observer Arokiasamy Vincent Raj, better known as 'Evidence' Kathir.

“He raked up many non-issues, including Indira Gandhi's alleged gifting of Katchatheevu island to Sri Lanka, which backfired when the DMK alliance countered, quoting actual government communications of those days. Informed debates have always been the hallmark of Tamil Nadu elections, leaving little room for gossip,'' Raj said.

In the meantime, leaders from BJP's long-time alliance partner AIADMK have said Annamalai was the lone person responsible for breaking the poll pact that resulted in both BJP and AIADMK drawing blanks in the election.

The poor performance has earned the displeasure of the national leadership of the BJP. Annamalai was dropped from the list of union ministers at the last minute, despite initial hints that he would be made a minister.

In his place, former party state president L. Murugan, who fought and lost in the Nilgiris constituency, was inducted into the ministry, considering that he is from the most backward Arundhathiyar community and his existing representation in Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh.

Leaders from AIADMK have said a possible alliance between the two parties might have fetched at least 35 seats, and Annamalai spoiled that possibility.

"Like in many other state units of the BJP, the old timers here are angry about how the central leadership is imposing new generation leaders above them. They feel upset and sidelined as the new leaders without grass-roots connections and organisational discipline, behaving in ways that contradict the traditional mode of functioning,'' said S. P. Udayakumar, a Nagercoil-based writer and activist.

"If Annamalai had controlled his mouth, there would have been a better result. Only one leader is responsible for this massive defeat for everyone. Because of his inexperience, the anti-DMK parties in Tamil Nadu faced this tragic result. If he had learned from his predecessors and controlled his tongue, Delhi leaders wouldn't have suffered this much. His wrong move made the BJP short of a simple majority in Delhi," said K. Udayakumar, an influential AIADMK leader in Madurai, one of the seats where AIADMK was pushed to the third position.

The man in the middle of the controversy, however, brushed aside the charges and allegations.

"The results show what Modi has done for Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Our vote share has gone up. As per data from the Election Commission of India, the BJP secured nearly 11.24% of the votes in the state by contesting 23 Lok Sabha constituencies. The first time, we are getting a double-digit increase in votes,'' Annamalai said.

"Annamalai is unlikely to be in the state president post for a long. BJP will replace him soon. However, the party faces a leadership vacuum in Tamil Nadu as people like Tamilisai are regarded as old guards. And if the situation prevails, BJP will be able to win at least a dozen seats in the next assembly election,'' said Lakshmanan.