Chennai: The BJP is said to have assigned a private agency with the task of ascertaining the chances of Prime Minister Narendra Modi winning from a Lok Sabha seat in Tamil Nadu in the coming 2024 elections and sample surveys were being held in constituencies like Coimbatore and Ramanathapuram.
Since Modi won the 2019 elections from Kasi (Varanasi constituency), he would like to represent Rameswaram (Ramanathapuram constituency) in Parliament from 2024, sources said adding that the other constituency that was being explored was Coimbatore as the region is seen as more friendly to the BJP.
Whether the opinion polls come out with results recommending Modi to contest from Tamil Nadu or not, there are several other senior BJP leaders who would like to fight the Lok Sabha polls since an impression has been created that the party’s popularity has soared of late and that there is a resentment against the DMK government on various fronts.
Enthused by such predictions, it is learnt that even Telangana governor Tamilisai Soundarajan herself would like to fight it out from Thoothukudi constituency, from where she lost the electoral fight to Kanimozhi Karunanidhi of the DMK in 2019.
Others nurturing hopes of contesting the Lok Sabha polls are C P Radhakrishnan from Tiruppur, L Murugan from Nilgiris, K Annamalai from Coimbatore, H Raja from Sivaganga and Pon Radhakrishnan from Kanyakumari.
Most of the leaders are said to have already started the ground work by visiting the constituencies and also developing local level functionaries to work for them in the elections.
However, the rumour is that the BJP would like to field young people in the next elections and the old timers in the party might not be given opportunities, while is still not clear if the constituencies that the senior BJP leaders want would be allocated to them by the coalition leader, the AIADMK, when the bugle for polls is sounded.
Meanwhile, the ongoing fight between Annamalai and ousted functionary of the party Gayathri Raguramm is all set to hit the road with two yatras crisscrossing the State. Raguramm, who had threatened to take out the yatra to Kanyakumari from January 27 demanding safety and security for women in the BJP has postponed it to April 12.
When Raguramm will be travelling from Chennai to Kanyakumari, Annamalai would take out a yatra from Thiruchendur to Chennai with a view to reaching out to the people ahead of the 2024 elections.
By naming her protest march as ‘Shakti Yatra,’ Raguramm is mobilizing women to participate in it as she is raising an issue concerning all women.
Rumours have it that an anti-Annamalai lobby working within the State BJP was encouraging the disgraced woman leader to put up the fight in a bid to oust Annamalai from the post. Though several attempts were made earlier to evict Annamalai from the chair he is occupying now, the old timers in the party could not do it for various reasons.
Now that the elections were coming close, the old timers would like to revive their demand for a change in the State leadership, which could not only give them the pre-eminence they enjoyed earlier and also win them seats to contest in the next elections.
