Buoyed by PM Modi’s nine visits, BJP bets big on TN

CHENNAI: The state, which is going to polls on April 19 for the Lok Sabha witnessed fierce campaigns and acrimonious debates and a never seen before kind of spirited fight put up by the BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to gain a foothold in the Dravidian land.

The election mood was set early in January, with the commencement of repeated visits by PM Modi who combined development and honour for Tamil language and culture as his main election plank that also had the key element of denouncing DMK-Congress over alleged corruption and dynasty politics.

Arguably, the 2024 LS polls is the only one in recent history in which the BJP set the tone for campaign discourse by mounting attacks rather than being in defence by coming up with disclosures on Katchatheevu issue besides vehemently taking up other matters. Katchatheevu issue led to a slanging match between the Saffron party, led by a fierce BJP state president K Annamalai and the DMK-Congress combine.

A PM visiting TN nine times before a LS election is undoubtedly a first in the state’s history. It demonstrated the BJP’s resolve to break the electoral jinx it faces in the Dravidian land, almost on its own, with the support of only fewer allies. Barring the 2014 victory of BJP veteran Pon Radhakrishnan from Kanniyakumari segment, the Saffron party won in Tamil Nadu, since 1998, only when it aligned with either the AIADMK or DMK, the Dravidian twins.

In effect, Modi’s campaign was exhaustive in the state and he has addressed rallies in constituencies, including Chennai, Coimbatore, Vellore and Tirunelveli. Chennai South, Tirunelveli, Coimbatore, Nilgiris and Vellore are the seats where the BJP nominees have gone the extra mile to convince voters.

DMK president and Chief Minister MK Stalin led the campaign on the themes of social justice, his regime’s welfare measures and “dangers” the nation faced due to the BJP, which has wrecked fiscal federalism.

He often described the polls as the second independence movement to free the nation from the BJP’s “divisive politics” and recalled the electoral bond issue to claim that it has unmasked the corrupt face of the BJP. Stalin throughout his campaign did not spare the main opposition AIADMK.

AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami was among the early birds on poll landscape when he addressed a rally of ally SDPI in January. Palaniswami, took on the ruling DMK over every single issue that mattered, including alleged collapse of law and order and drug menace. Only towards the end of the campaign, he fiercely attacked the BJP for being discriminatory on the basis of “caste and religion.”