BJP to contest 20 TN Assembly seats & Kanyakumari LS seat

Chennai: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be contesting in 20 Tamil Nadu assembly seats alongside the Loksabha seat from Kanyakumari where bypolls was necessitated following the death of sitting Member of Parliament H. Vasanthakumar.

The seat-sharing arrangement with the ruling AIADMK party was finalised late Friday.

While state BJP leadership was expecting more than 25 seats, the AIADMK leadership was adamant that they cannot part with more than 20 seats given the grassroots-level strength of the BJP in Tamil Nadu.

BJP leader and former Karaikkudi MLA, H. Raja, told IANS: "We deserve more seats but we got only 20 seats. Our aim is to win maximum seats out of these and become a major player in the assembly."

The party is also expecting to wrest the Kanyakumari Lok Sabha seat from the Congress.

The party veteran leader Pon Radhakrishnan, who is a former Union Minister will be contesting the seat for the ninth time. He lost the 2019 general elections by a margin of 3 lakh votes to H Vasanthakumar of Congress .

Pon Radhakrishnan told IANS: "We will win the seat this time. There were certain communal issues which were fanned in the last elections and hence I lost. However, we will make it up and wrest the seat from the Congress".

Union Home Minister Amit Shah will be personally overseeing the Kanyakumari Lok Sabha elections and is set to reach the holy city on Sunday morning and hold meeting with party workers.

BJP Tamil Nadu state president L. Murugan is highly optimistic about the party's prospects in the assembly polls and said: "BJP has made deep inroads in the Tamil heartlands and these grassroot-level organizational work will be transferred into votes.

"Also the performance of the Modi government at the Centre has given the BJP a great advantage. We will surprise poll pundits and politcal observers in this election and will win maximum seats". Tamil Nadu goes to polls on April 6 and the results will be announced on May 2.

It is to be noted that Tamil Nadu is a state with castes and community playing a major roll in elections and with a Dalit leader like Murugan leading the party, BJP is expected to improve its stakes.

Political observer and Swadeshi Jagaran Manch leader, Mahesh Krishnamoorthy, told IANS: "BJP has definitely improved its position at the grassroots-level and now it is to be seen how it will be transformed into votes.

"BJP has done an excellent social engineering and this will benefit the party in the long run. It is certain that the BJP will win several seats in this elections given the alliance with the AIADMK as well as its own inherent strength."