LOTUS TAKES ROOT

Buoyed by its slowly growing acceptance among the voters in Tamil Nadu, the BJP is mounting its fiercest offensive ever

- LAKSHMI SUBRAMANIAN

TAMIL NADU

On April 15, four days before the polling date in Tamil Nadu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the state for the eighth time in the three and a half months. Two days before Modi’s visit to south Tamil Nadu, Union Home Minister Amit Shah held a road show in Madurai. At the same time, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was campaigning in Nilgiris and Coimbatore. BJP president J.P. Nadda has held two roadshows in Tamil Nadu and one in Puducherry. And, Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Smriti Irani and Anurag Thakur have campaigned in Chennai.

Nainar Nagendran, the BJP’s legislative party leader and candidate from Tirunelveli, claimed there was growing acceptance for the BJP in the state. “People in my constituency like Modi,” he told THE WEEK. “Everyone here knows about the schemes brought by the Central government. They are aware of the housing scheme, the free LPG scheme and the medical insurance scheme.”

Certain pockets in the state, like the Kanniyakumari-Nagercoil-Tirunelveli belt, a few wards in Ramanathapuram and a few assembly segments like Coimbatore South have always voted for the BJP or the candidate associated with the sangh parivar. This and its alliances with the Dravidian parties (AIADMK in 1998 and DMK in 1999) had allowed the BJP to win three Lok Sabha seats in 1998 and four in 1999. It also won one seat—Kanniyakumari—in 2014, notably without an ally.