Party will decide: Annamalai on contesting Tamil Nadu polls

BJP Tamil Nadu vice-president and ex-IPS officer K Annamalai said Friday that the party's central leadership will take a call on whether or not he should be fielded in the upcoming assembly elections scheduled April 6.

Speaking to reporters, Annamalai said that he was not certain about contesting the polls. "If the party selects me, I will contest. Or else, I will involve myself in other (organizational) activities for the party ahead of the upcoming elections," he said, adding that he had not asked for a ticket.

The BJP, he said, was different from Congress when it came to selecting canddiates for an election. "Ours is a party with a difference unlike other parties where (candidates) sit in Delhi with a suitcase and select where they want to contest. Such things won't work," he said, dubbing the Congress as a "suitcase" party. "Our Tamil Nadu co-incharge Sudhakar Reddy was with the Congress. Before that, he was in charge of Gujarat and an MLC from Andhra Pradesh. At the time of his resignation, he openly said Congress is a suitcase party."

Annamalai pointed out that the BJP was contesting 20 seats alongside its ally AIADMK and that he was confident that the saffron party would win two out of every three seat. "Our objective is to ensure that DMK does not come to power. We're serious about this, because the DMK itself has become anti-national, considering the issues they are raising and the nature of the party," he said.

Annamalai, 36, joined the BJP in August last year. He was a Karnataka-cadre IPS officer who served in the state for nine years and came to be known as Karnataka's Singham. He resigned from the IPS in May 2019.