BJP eyeing Tamil Nadu as J P Nadda tours the state

BJP is planning to have PM Modi as well as Amit Shah hold rallies and meetings across the state in 2023

After a concerted push in Telangana, the Bharatiya Janata Party has set its sights on Tamil Nadu, with an intent to increase its electoral footprint in the south. This week, the party has sent in president JP Nadda for a tour there in Coimbatore, keen to drum up the support it has seen in some regions.

On Tuesday, Nadda paid a visit to the Kottai Easwaran Temple, besides a meeting with media and local dignitaries, and a public rally at Coimbatore. He also visited the house of a party worker. BJP workers said that the party has seen a positive response in the Nilgiri areas.

Party leaders said that a host of initiatives are in the offing, and Nadda’s visit will be the beginning of a series of such visits. The party is planning to have PM Narendra Modi as well as Union Home Minister Amit Shah hold rallies and meetings across the state in 2023.

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Union ministers from the OBC, SC and ST communities are also set to make routine visits across the state in the run up to 2024, and state leaders have also been asked to carry out the party’s trademark pravas programme in their regions, especially in villages. As part of the activities, K Annamalai, president of the state unit, had spent the night in the hut of a tribal family at Erode district’s Bargur village in November.

Leaders involved in meetings said that part of Nadda’s agenda was meetings on booth management of the party and that leaders have been asked to pay special attention to forming panna samitis in the state. In addition to that, a dossier of people’s concerns is being made. “The focus of the party’s campaign in the run-up to the elections should be on people-centric activities,” a state unit leader said.

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The BJP has also pursued the Kashi-Tamil Sangam, a month-long cultural programme in Varanasi, the PM’s Lok Sabha constituency, where the focus was on the exchange of ideas and culture between the cultures of Tamil Nadu and Varanasi. The state unit leader mentioned above said that the programme was a bid to highlight the similarities between North India as well as South India. “The prime minister has sought to make a connection with the people of Tamil Nadu by bridging them to his constituency. We are sure the people will appreciate that,” the leader said.

In the last Lok Sabha elections, in 2021, the BJP had contested five of the 39 seats in the state with alliance partner All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, losing all five. The AIADMK won only one seat.