As Tamil Nadu and Puducherry go to vote on April 19, the textile town of Coimbatore is all set to witness a three-cornered contest, with the two Dravidian parties and the BJP sweating it out in the constituency.
While the BJP has fielded its state president and former IPS officer K. Annamalai, (39) to make the contest tough, the AIADMK has fielded an IIM graduate, Singai G. Ramachandran (36), and the DMK has given the ticket to former mayor and a journalism post graduate, Ganapathy P. Rajkumar. The constituency, which was held by the CPI(M), has now been retained by the DMK as Annamalai chose to contest from there. The AIADMK banks on the strengths of its former minister S.P. Velumani, who is known to be the party’s strongman from this region. The party has close to a dozen MLAs from the Coimbatore-Pollachi-Tiruppur region.
Campaigning at Chinna Kammalapatti in Sulur on Monday, Ramachandran, son of former AIADMK Singanallur MLA Singai Govindarajan, tells The Week that the AIADMK has the ground support. “We are not a party from Delhi. Imagine what presence the national parties have here. He is just five years old in politics. I did not come up on my father’s legacy, as he (Annamalai) comments.” Ramachandran, who lost his father at the age of 11, was raised by his single mother, only to get into IIM (Ahmedabad). Ramachandran, fondly called Ram by his partymen, is an accepted face in the AIADMK bastions in Coimbatore.
DMK’s candidate Ganapathy Rajkumar too is a popular face in the constituency. Not outspoken and argumentative like his fellow contestants, Rajkumar is calm and composed. During his campaigns, he talked about his leader M.K. Stalin, what he had done to Coimbatore as its former mayor, and his promises to develop the constituency. As a person who was part of the AIADMK earlier, Rajkumar also knows the strengths and weaknesses of Velumani and the opposition camp. “I am familiar with the terrain. I am confident of winning,” Rajkumar told The Week.
Unlike the BJP, both the AIADMK and the DMK have strong infrastructure. Their booth agents and the party machinery down the line, know each voter in the constituency. The AIADMK has a very strong presence in assembly constituencies like Sulur and Palladam. But the two parties are going around the constituency on the ground as the BJP considers its fight for Coimbatore more prestigious with its state president contesting from here.
An outsider who did his graduation from Coimbatore, Annamalai enjoys the strong support base of the Sangh Parivar and the RSS here. Coimbatore south assembly constituency MLA Vanathi Srinivasan is from BJP who won on the AIADMK alliance in 2021. Apart from this, the urban and semi-urban nature of the constituencies and the complex mixture of rich business people and labour population, the BJP feels, will turn into an advantage for Annamalai.
However, Annamalai’s challenge is that the people in the constituency look at him as someone from outside. The caste equations, though not obvious, are strong in Coimbatore. The Gounders and the Telugu-speaking Naidus run every business establishment in the city. While DMK’s Rajkumar hails from the Gounder community, Ramachandran belongs to the Naidu community. Though a Gounder, Annamalai's roots are in Karur which doesn’t go well with the Coimbatore Gounder community. Also, the issue of GST and the increasing raw material costs have turned into a huge opposition for Annamalai and BJP.
Apart from this, though Annamalai had got his team to work on the ground from outside Coimbatore, the party machinery is not as strong as it was expected. Highly placed sources say that many of the big shots who were brought in by Annamalai to Coimbatore to manage the elections have walked out. One of the powerful sand mining barons in Tamil Nadu who recently came under the ED and IT scanner was reportedly working for the BJP in Coimbatore. However, according to sources, he withdrew from Coimbatore close to the elections.
On Wednesday, hours before the campaign came to a close, Annamalai turned emotional as he was speaking to people in an old age home in Coimbatore. The crowd consoled him and blessed him as he fell on their feet. Annamalai’s campaign and road shows in Coimbatore draw young crowd. He seemed to have offered some hope for the young budding professionals who have always had a second thought about politics.
The tough contest between the three heavyweights in the business town of Coimbatore may throw in some surprises on June 4.
