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 on Friday.
According to the reports, the state BJP leadership was expecting more than 25 seats. The AIADMK leadership, however, was adamant with no more than 20 seats given the grassroots-level strength of BJP in the state. 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. According to reports, 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.
Also Read | AIADMK released first list of candidates; CM K Palaniswami to contest from Edappadi
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 .
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 grass root-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 political observers in this election and will win maximum seats.”
Also Read | EC announces poll dates for West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu & Puducherry
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."
Tamil Nadu goes to polls on April 6 and the results will be announced on May 2.
Political observer and Swadeshi Jagaran Manch leader, Mahesh Krishnamoorthy, told IANS, "BJP has definitely improved its position at the grass root-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 election given the alliance with the AIADMK as well as its own inherent strength."
(With Inputs from IANS)
