As soon as the AIADMK, which had partnered the BJP in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), declared that it was ending the alliance, BJP leader C.T. Ravi, who is still handling Tamil Nadu for the party, was at pains to emphasise that there were still eight months left to go for the next Lok Sabha polls.
With the assertion that there was a fair bit to go before the next Lok Sabha poll and that “no one can predict what might happen before then,” Mr. Ravi was clearly signalling that as before in its alliances with other parties, especially in south India, the BJP was stuck between long term strategy and short term gain, and was basically crossing its fingers hoping the storm would pass.
The BJP as a political party does not have much of an electoral presence in Tamil Nadu. In the coalition era before 2014, both the DMK and the AIADMK have been allies to different parties in power at the Centre. Since 2019, the BJP has been an ally of the AIADMK, and was witness to the succession fight that ensued in the party after the death of former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa.
The alliance was not very fruitful with regard to electoral success, neither in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls nor in the 2021 Assembly polls, but the biggest problem for the BJP has been the fact that unlike what had happened in Karnataka, no big community group, like the Lingayats in Karnataka, aligned with the BJP even when the AIADMK was going through its war of succession.
Annamalai’s appointment
The BJP government at the Centre, meanwhile, tried to get into the largely Dravidian narrative in the State, by investing much political capital in organising events like the Kashi-Tamil Sangamam and the Saurashtra Tamil Sangamam, which spoke of cultural ties between Tamil Nadu and other parts of the State that predated the independence of India. The BJP then appointed former IPS officer K. Annamalai as its State unit chief, who has publicly maintained in his utterances and in the yatra that he is undertaking across the State that the BJP should go its own way to strengthen its organisation in Tamil Nadu.
For the BJP, long denied of any strong face in the State unit, Mr. Annamalai is a natural choice to make to get the party a higher profile in the State. However, Mr. Annamalai’s pulling power, without a big social coalition backing the party, is yet untested and indeed does not inspire too much confidence.
The BJP’s national leadership is mindful of the fact that the next Lok Sabha poll in 2024 is going to be highly polarised and even small percentages of vote shifts can make a huge difference. The NDA’s inclusion of many parties with no MPs or even MLAs, shows that the BJP wants a large social coalition to take on the INDIA bloc and the regional parties in power in various States. Therefore, the walking out of the AIADMK from the NDA over Mr. Annamalai’s leadership style has put the BJP right in the middle of its electoral strategy of ensuring electoral consolidation through allies, and the long term strategy of striking out on its own in Tamil Nadu, which has long been a political cipher to the BJP. Mr. Ravi’s citing of “eight months’ time” is therefore the BJP’s moment to pause and consider.
