New Delhi is finally getting the context right in the state, local leaders say, with the party unit building an “all caste-inclusive campaign” with a special push on local gods and an aggressive campaign against the ruling DMK’s political positions.
This, it hopes, will expand its footprint in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Cabinet ministers have been making a beeline to the state over the past month in official outreach as well as an “organic” connect with people from all walks of life, following the state unit’s inputs to the national team.
Recently, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman interacted with local vendors in Mylapore (Chennai), while ministers Bhupender Yadav, Piyush Goyal and Smriti Irani as well as others completed “review trips” to the state.
State BJP president K Annamalai told ET that the DMK had not been able to present or sustain a powerful narrative in Tamil Nadu.
“The commoners are not buying the DMK’s propaganda that the BJP’s schemes are anti-Tamil Nadu or that it is imposing Hindi on us. If that were the case, 2021 should have been a sweep for the DMK,” he said.
The last 16 months, he added, have made it clear that there was no exclusive Dravidian model of development that the DMK can come up with.
Modi, he said, had delivered on ground-level welfare measures and ministers as well as local leaders were coming to the state to talk about those.
The Tamil Nadu unit of the BJP will organise protests in all districts on October 27 to expose what it claimed as a “drama” being enacted by the DMK government on the language imposition issue.
According to a senior leader, the BJP has made course corrections in the state – where it was viewed as a “Hindi-Hindutva” party earlier – to address the anti-Modi sentiment that had emerged earlier following protests in favour of Jallikattu (involving a bull let loose into a crowd that attempts to bring it to a stop), against NEET exams and other issues.
“Look at any poster of the Central scheme now in the State. It is all in Tamil and has pictures of only Tamilians…,” a senior leader said.
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