Tamil Nadu Urban local body polls took place after a gap of ten years on 9th February, 2022. The poll result reflects that BJP has potential to become an alternative pole in Tamil Nadu politics. BJP has finally taken entry in Tamil Nadu local bodies which can be a cause of worry for the Dravidian parties. It has won 22 seats out of 1374 corporation wards, 56 seats out of 2,843 municipal wards and 230 out of 7,621 town panchayat seats. BJP had achieved 3 percent vote share from 308 seats. In this poll the main challenge in front of BJP was to break the misconception of ‘northern party, Hindi belt party and pro-Hindu party’ image, which has been spread there successfully by parties like DMK.
BJP contested alone without any alliance in this poll. AIADMK was not accommodating BJP’s demands, that’s why BJP decided to walk out of the alliance. Although BJP had two choices either it have to walk alone or can make Rajnikanth and his party a partner. But ultimately BJP decided to contest the election alone and project its own leaders like former IPS officer K Annamalai.
K Annamalai is the State President of BJP in Tamil Nadu. He is a strong leader and leads the party with confidence. K Annamalai can fulfil the leadership vacuum in Tamil Nadu and can act as a political alternative to the Dravidian ideology and caste-based politics. He decided to contest the election alone because he wanted to strengthen the ground level of the party. According to him BJP has registered a remarkable victory. BJP actually had very less vote shares in Tamil Nadu previously, but in this election, it had reached places where it didn’t had representations before. But still the party have to work hard to strengthen its roots in the state of Tamil Nadu. BJP lost several seats by a very small margin of votes. As per K Annamalai BJP has emerged as third largest party in the state. I think the central leaders should design strategies to reach out the people of the state. Both AIADMK and BJP should rethink of their alliance because many places like in Kongu region, DMK won only because AIADMK and BJP were no more in Alliance.
