Lok Sabha Elections 2024: BJP confident of securing internal target in Tamil Nadu, says K Annamalai

K Annamalai

Bharatiya Janata Party’s Tamil Nadu unit president K Annamalai spoke to News18 after the exit poll results 2024, and predicted that the BJP-led NDA (National Democratic Alliance) would open its account in the state in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections with one to three seats.

Admitting that Tamil Nadu as a state generally “swings very massively”, he said that it is difficult for any exit poll to capture the poll predictions accurately.

However, the former IPS officer who is fighting the general elections on a BJP ticket from the Coimbatore seat, said, the party is confident of having achieved the internal target of 25 percent votes (or to cross 20 percent).

“We should be somewhere close to 20 percent as BJP party, and somewhere close to 25 percent as NDA,” Annamalai said.

The BJP's vote share in the state declined from 5.5 percent in 2014 to 3.67 percent in 2019.

Speaking about seats where he expects the NDA to have performed well, he mentioned Kanyakumari, Vellore, Coimbatore, Chennai seats, and the Thanjavur seat, among those where he expects to emerge victorious.

Notably, the News18 exit poll has projected a win for K Annamalai from the Coimbatore constituency. The constituency, which went to polls during the first phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections on April 19, registered its highest voter turnout since the past two decades.

“We should emerge victorious in these seats,” he said, adding, however, that the “margins will be very close, even where the BJP wins”.

According to the News18 Mega Exit Poll results released on June 1, the Congress alone will likely win 8-10 seats in the state, while the INDIA bloc could win 36-39 seats. The opposition AIAMDK is expected to be significantly weakened as per exit poll predictions.