In Coimbatore, amid Annamalai buzz, Dravidian parties say it’s their battle to lose

As campaigning winds down in Tamil Nadu ahead of polling in all 39 constituencies on Friday, one of the highly anticipated battles will unfold in the cosmopolitan business hub of Coimbatore between the DMK, the AIADMK, and the BJP.

While much of the focus on Coimbatore has to do with the BJP candidate being its state president K Annamalai, a polarising figure, the Dravidian parties in the fray have also fielded strong candidates. At present, Coimbatore, which has been a difficult seat to gauge in previous elections, is held by the CPI(M), a member of the DMK-led alliance. But the AIADMK alliance, which included the BJP at the time, swept all six Assembly segments of the parliamentary constituency in the 2021 state elections, going against the pro-DMK wave that swept the rest of the state.

For the AIADMK, this is a prestige battle for its strongman S P Velumani, the most powerful figure in the party behind its chief and former Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami. The AIADMK had an acrimonious exit from the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) earlier this year and one of the reasons was Annamalai’s criticism of the Dravidian icons and comments about the party’s late leader Jayalalithaa.

The AIADMK candidate is 36-year-old “Singai” G Ramachandran who is banking to a large extent on the legacy of his late father “Singai” Govindaraju, a former party MLA. Ramachandran, an IIM Ahmedabad graduate, rules out a three-way contest and directs his ire at the state BJP president. “Those in Delhi believe that Annamalai has no opposition and has already won the election. He may not even know the existence of this remote village,” he tells The Indian Express at a campaign event about 10 km from Coimbatore city.

The AIADMK candidate,