In a major organisational reshuffle, the BJP is all set to name its senior leader and MLA Nainar Nagendran as the new president of its state unit. He will be the 13th president of the Tamil Nadu BJP, succeeding K. Annamalai.
Nagendran is the only choice of the Delhi high command. His name was announced by none other than Union Home Minister Amit Sha. The move to appoint Nagendran to the top post came just hours before the BJP struck a poll deal with the AIADMK. Incidentally, Annamalai opted himself out of the race for the state president post, a day after AIADMK leader Edappadi K. Palanisami called on Shah in Delhi. Though Shah said there were no demands or conditions by the AIADMK leadership, Annamalai’s comments against the Dravidian party had cost the alliance.
A soft-spoken and a man who came from the Dravidian roots, the 64-year-old Nagendran is a prominent face of the party. In the past eight years of his journey in the BJP, Nagendran has perfectly embraced the saffron brigade’s social engineering project in Tamil Nadu. During a free-wheeling chat with THE WEEK last year, as the BJP candidate from the Tirunelveli Lok Sabha constituency, Nagendran shared his idea of uniting the Hindus, including the Dalits and Other Backward Classes (OBC), under one umbrella.
Nagendran was to make Tirunelveli a ‘Kanyakumari model’ constituency for the BJP, with a solid vote base. In Kanyakumari, as the Christians and Muslims came together, the BJP consolidated the Hindu voters. Hailing from the Maravar community, a sub-caste from the intermediate Thevar community which is dominant in the south, Nagendran is a prominent face in South Tamil Nadu who wields a strong influence among the landlords.
Nagendran has had a long journey in Tamil Nadu politics since 1989. He joined the AIADMK that year, when the party saw a split under Jayalalithaa and MGR’s wife Janaki, soon after MGR’s demise. He sided with Jayalalithaa’s faction. Hailing from down south, Nagendran started as the town secretary of Panagudi in the Tirunelveli unit of the AIADMK. The party had lost Tirunelveli to the DMK after the death of MGR. In 1998, the AIADMK celebrated its silver jubilee in Tirunelveli, where Nagendran had his feet. His hard work impressed Jayalalithaa and he got a ticket to contest the 2001 elections. Nagendran then climbed up the political ladder to become the electricity minister. He held other portfolios, such as transport and industries, in Jayalalithaa’s cabinet.
In 2006, when Jayalalithaa lost power, Nagendran too lost the election from the Tirunelveli constituency by a mere 600 vote margin. He won from Tirunelveli again in 2011. Later, after the death of Jayalalithaa in 2016, he sided with V.K. Sasikala and T.T.V. Dhinakaran. But later, he chose to join the BJP and contested the 2019 election from Ramanathapuram. He finished second and lost to the DMK alliance’s candidate Nawaz Kani.
Since joining the BJP, Nagendran has always had special attention from the party’s high command. A man, who rose from the ranks in a Dravidian party, unlike Annamalai, Nagendran is considered to be a seasoned politician who can fight the DMK and embrace the AIADMK.
On the other hand, his appointment is also looked at as an effort to consolidate the party’s presence in south Tamil Nadu and take forward its caste outreach. Though he is not from the RSS background, Nagendran, being a staunch god believer, is seen as a plus for the BJP in the south.
