Party is now hoping to make serious inroads in Dravidian heartland.
New Delhi: Recent success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Tamil Nadu urban civic body polls had given the party hope to make some inroads in the Dravidian heartland and the party has energised the state unit to put up a good show in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. In the closely contested local body polls, the BJP, which fought on 5,594 seats, was able to register victory in 308 wards with a total vote share of 5.4%. The party had seen more than doubling of its vote share in comparison to the last urban local bodies polls which was held in 2011. The saffron party had got only two percent votes in 2011 urban bodies polls.
Despite the impressive show, many analysts have argued that the BJP has a long road ahead in Tamil Nadu as in this election also despite getting more than five percent votes, the party was not able to expand its influence outside a few districts. Talking to The Sunday Guardian from Chennai, Rahul Raghunathan, a senior political analyst said, “Out of the 308 wards the BJP won, 199 are in Kanyakumari. It is true that the party for the first time won wards in Vellore, Cuddalore and Madurai districts. But, they were totally absent in Western Tamil Nadu.”
The BJP which hadn’t won any Assembly seat in the state between 2006-2016, was successful in winning four seats in the 2021 Tamil Nadu assembly polls but much of the credit goes to the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) which had given 20 assembly seats in the alliance to the saffron party in the urban districts.
BJP support base in the state is among the Nadar population which is mostly concentrated in few districts like Kanyakumari. The first party MLA named C. Velayudhan was also elected from the Padmanabhapuram Assembly segment under Kanyakumari district in the 1996 assembly polls.
Talking to The Sunday Guardian, L. Kanagasabapathy, senior BJP leader from the state, said, “Since long the political parties which are running private limited companies have projected us as ‘Anti-Tamil’ party, which is totally wrong. In the campaign we reached out to the voters and convinced them that our party respects the language, culture and traditions of Tamil Nadu. The Prime Minister had time and again given reference to the Tamil language on the international forums. Since the state elections in 2021 our MLAs are quite active in the assembly, they are raising the people’s issues and have cornered the DMK government. It has helped us in the polls. BJP is the only party which is raising the Lavanya suicide issue. We are going to use the next one and half years to build a strong cadre network under the leadership of state president K. Annamali.”
In the urban civic body polls, the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) emerged as the number one party by winning more than 7,500 seats and getting more than 42 percent votes. The AIADMK which fought on 11,538 seats was able to win only 2,000 seats and its vote share also dropped by seven percent in comparison to the previous election.