In Tamil Nadu, BJP rides on stormy petrel Annamalai in bid to disrupt Dravidian play

Is the BJP trying to pick up the thread that Kamaraj lost? The legendary Congressman was the last non-Dravidian electoral icon in the state. Barring the very few in their late seventies, most Tamil voters wouldn’t remember him. After the debacle in the 1967 Assembly polls where he himself lost, the Tamil Nadu Congress hasn’t seen a matching vote catcher so far.

Since then, the state has been exercising its choice between the Dravidian parties or their alliances. Also every time, even in the heydays of Indira Gandhi, the campaign for even the Lok Sabha polls has been led by a regional satrap — C N Annadurai, M Karunanidhi, M G Ramachandran, J Jayalalithaa, and now M K Stalin. Would this pattern get disrupted?

This time, there is a second national party in the picture and it is going for broke. With no significant regional alliance to speak of, the BJP is projecting a new solo flier as leader, K Annamalai, its state unit president. Just into his fourth year in politics, having joined the BJP in 2020 after quitting the IPS, he has no political baggage – a big plus in a state that has seen far too many shifty moves after Jayalalitha’s death in 2016. Forget voters, even analysts can’t keep track of the party hoppers.

On June 4, when votes are counted, Annamalai would turn 40 and “we’ll party and party”, say a band of smart phone-wielding young fans clad uniformly in white shirt and jaded jeans. Those in the audience at the campaign site in Palladam (one of the Assembly segments of the Coimbatore Lok Sabha constituency) unlikely to be into YouTube or Instagram, would be unaware of Annamalai’s digital presence. They could almost miss him in the passing roadshow. He might appear more like the customary aide beside the neta, not the