Chennai: The BJP’s decision to wrap up the ‘En Mann, En Makkal’ (My Land My People) yatra at Palladam in Tiruppur district and not in the State capital by bringing the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to address the public, which was more of a campaign for the next Lok Sabha elections, is just one of the indications of the western districts of the state becoming the cynosure of all political fronts.
The western region, which is naturally verdant and industrially developed, accounts for 12 Lok Sabha constituencies spread across the districts of Karur, Salem, Namakkal, Tiruppur, Coimbatore and Erode and all the three major political are hopeful that it could be turned into their citadel.
One of the many reasons for the leaders of the major coalitions, the DMK, AIADMK and BJP, to feel that way is that they all think that they can capture the region easily. While the DMK is hopeful since the party and its allies already have all the constituencies in their kitty – the only seat that the coalition lost in 2019 was Theni – the AIADMK and BJP too think it is their bastion for other reasons.
For the AIADMK, not only their general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami is a son of the soil but also its lead honchos like S P Velumani and P Thangamani, who are also very popular among the people of their region for their exemplary work during their stint as Ministers.
The BJP too thinks that Hindutva ideology was deep rooted in the region and the people, unlike those in other regions of the State, are more amenable to the party as they had returned two of its candidates in 2021 elections – C Saraswathi from Modakurichi and Vanathi Srinivasan from Coimbatore South – to the Assembly.
Above that, their state president K Annamalai hails from the region, which the BJP believes to be its enduring support base, and the party thinks that his individual popularity has grown among the people after the 2021 elections, which he lost miserably.
Though the DMK had won all the 12 seats falling in the region in 2019, doubts are being raised over the possibility of a repeat performance by some critics, who attribute the sweeping victory in the last elections to the field work of former Minister V Senthil Balaji, who also happens to be from the region.
Now that the Madras High Court has declined bail to Senthil Balaji once again, it is doubtful if he would be on the field for the Lok Sabha polls that might come up in another two months. In the absence of Senthil Balaji, the DMK has assigned its star campaigner, Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin, for the region.
What it all means is that the Western part of Tamil Nadu gives hope to all the major political parties – even individual politicians like Kamal Haasan want to contest from Coimbatore as he had done in the past – of winning over the people. And hence, none of the major coalitions is leaving any stone unturned.
All of them have planned meetings and other events in the region as part of their campaigns and the coming days will see all the three coalitions reaching out to the people in the western districts in special ways.
