The BJP is hoping to make major headway in a state that has never given it more than four seats (in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections). It failed to open its account in 2019 while its partner, the AIADMK, managed to win the seat of Theni by a narrow vote margin of 6.2%.
High-octane poll campaigning in Tamil Nadu this time around saw the BJP go all out and rake up hot-button issues like Katchatheevu to lure voters away from the Congress as well as regional parties like the AIADMK (its past ally) or M K Stalin’s DMK (which has allied with the Congress in the 2024 elections).
Revealing the importance of the state in the BJP’s poll strategy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has visited Tamil Nadu at least 8 times in the past four months and has held several rallies and roadshows to drum up support for the party as well as its star candidate K Annamalai.
Seats of interest
The BJP will be contesting on 23 seats, while its much smaller allies will fight on the remaining 16 seats.
BJP state unit chief Annamalai has been fielded from Coimbatore, a seat that the party lost by a vote margin of 14.6% in the 2019 polls to P. R. Natarajan of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
Lok Sabha seats of Chidambaram, Vellore and Dharmapuri, Theni and Tiruppur are likely to see a neck to neck fight where victory margin was less than 10% in the last Lok Sabha polls.
INDIA alliance
As per the seat-sharing arrangement between the Congress and the DMK, the Dravidian party will contest on 22 seats while the Congress will field candidates from 9 seats. The CPI and CPI(M) will contest from 2 seats each.
In a sign of the hold commanded by the Congress and the DMK in Tamil Nadu, almost all the seats won by the parties (8 and 24, respectively) in 2019 saw a victory by a margin of between 1 lakh-5 lakh votes.
The parties also won the most decisive victories. The DMK won from Chennai North by a victory margin of over 49% while it secured the Dindigul seat by margin of 47%.
The Congress meanwhile won the Tiruchirappalli seat by a margin of 44.4%.