Lok Sabha Elections 2024 | Significant gains, but capturing South is still a distant dream for BJP

While the saffron party finally breached Kerala through Suresh Gopi, Tamil Nadu remains an untouched fortress. The lotus also bloomed in fewer areas in Karnataka this time around than in 2019.

Chennai: Though its performance in the North was way below popular expectations, the BJP on Tuesday made impressive gains in South India by bagging eight seats in the country’s youngest state of Telangana, winning three constituencies in Andhra Pradesh, securing a majority of seats in its stronghold of Karnataka, and opening its account in Kerala.

However, the Dravidian citadel of Tamil Nadu continued to remain a waterloo for the BJP with the saffron party and its alliance partners failing to win even one seat despite a massive push by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who visited the state a record eight times between January and April this year.

BJP also failed to open its account in Puducherry though it nominated the party’s popular face and Home Minister A Namassivayam from the Union Territory’s lone seat. Of the 130 seats in South India, the BJP won 29 seats with 17 coming from Karnataka, Telangana (8), Andhra Pradesh (3), and Kerala (1).

On the other hand, the Congress grabbed 40 seats with Kerala contributing 14 seats, Tamil Nadu (9), Karnataka and Telangana (8 each), and Puducherry (1). The remaining seats were won by regional parties, Left, and IUML.

The BJP’s performance in Karnataka, though eight seats less than what it scored in 2019, is significant as the saffron surge comes just a year after the party faced a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Congress, which posted its best performance in an assembly election in three decades.

In Telangana, the BJP doubled its 2019 tally of four seats to emerge victorious in eight Lok Sabha constituencies, just months after it failed to make much impact in the 2023 assembly elections which saw the Congress coming to power. Both the BJP and Congress decimated BRS led by K Chandrasekar Rao in Telangana which drew a blank.

Consolidation of the backward castes (BC) vote, the popularity of Modi, groundwork for the past five years, and farmers’ disappointment with the Congress government over its failure to implement the loan waiver scheme are some of the factors that helped the BJP breach the fort in Telangana.

In neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, the BJP, which doesn’t have a base of its own, benefitted immensely from its alliance with the Telugu Desam Party with its state unit chief D Purandeswari, daughter of late N T Ramarao, C M Ramesh, and Bhupathi Raju Srinivas Varma winning by huge margins.

The BJP’s decades-long dream of sending a representative to Parliament from Kerala came true with the resounding victory of actor Suresh Gopi from Thrissur Lok Sabha seat. The party invested huge in the seat with none other than Modi flying down to the constituency a couple of times, including to attend the wedding ceremony of Gopi’s daughter in 2023.

Tamil Nadu remains the only Southern state that continues to dodge the BJP. The saffron party did hope to breach the Dravidian fort this time as it thought giving a free hand to its state unit chief K Annamalai would help win over Tamils, but the former IPS officer himself lost from the prestigious seat of Coimbatore.

However, the BJP’s vote share breached the double-digit mark for the first time in Tamil Nadu to reach about 11 per cent. Though the BJP and its alliance partners failed to win seats, they emerged as the runner-up in 11 Lok Sabha constituencies, including two in Chennai, pushing the principal Opposition party, AIADMK, to the third position, and sending across a message to the Dravidian majors that the BJP cannot be taken lightly anymore.