BLOOM AND BUST

BJP’s southern push comes a cropper in Tamil Nadu, but the party gains in the two Telugu states and retains its edge in Karnataka 

- LAKSHMI SUBRAMANIAN, RAHUL DEVULAPALLI & PRATHIMA NANDAKUMAR 

On his 70th birthday in March 2023, addressing a public meeting with leaders of the DMK coalition, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin said, “An alliance without the Congress should be rejected as it would not succeed. An alliance after the election will also be practically impossible. A third front is pointless. I humbly request all political parties opposed to the BJP to understand this simple electoral arithmetic and stand united.”

A year later, the INDIA bloc made a clean sweep, winning all 39 seats in Tamil Nadu and the solitary one in neighbouring Puducherry. The BJP and its rainbow alliance failed miserably to breach the Dravidian fortress. 

The BJP has, however, managed to touch double-digit vote share in Tamil Nadu. The party directly contested in 19 seats and four of its allies also contested on the lotus symbol. It finished with a 10.72 per cent vote share, compared with 3.6 per cent in 2019, when the party was in alliance with the AIADMK. 

In the Coimbatore constituency, BJP state president K. Annamalai lost by a margin of 1.18 lakh votes to the DMK’s Ganapathi P. Raj Kumar. Other key BJP leaders like Tamilisai Soundararajan, L. Murugan, Pon Radhakrishnan and Nainar Nagendran, too, failed to impress the electorate.