'Can't make person stay in party with gun to head': Annamalai's unhappiness comes to fore as patience wears thin

Annamalai indicated he has reached the limits of his patience in tolerating the continued neglect by the party leadership.

A waiting game. A veiled threat. Cajoling. Flattery. After being sacrificed by the BJP national leadership at the altar of alliance, former Tamil Nadu BJP chief K Annamalai is adopting different, and even conflicting, tactics at the same time to return to political relevance with only months to go for the Assembly election.

Annamalai indicated he has reached the limits of his patience in tolerating the continued neglect by the party leadership.

“I will stay if I like or I will quit if I do not and return to farming. I will talk when the time comes. No one can make a person stay in a party with a gun pointed to his head. It is a voluntary mechanism. We are in politics spending our own money,” said Annamalai on Friday in Coimbatore.

He is clearly unhappy with the situation he has been left in by the party and certainly about the fact that the alliance with the AIADMK is not going the way he would have liked. There has been criticism of him by senior leaders of AIADMK.

“I am also waiting and watching as a karyakarta of the BJP,” Annamalai said on his future plans.

Annamalai was replaced by Nainar Nagendran, a former AIADMK minister, as the BJP chief in the state, evidently at the instance of AIADMK, led by its general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami, which made his removal a precondition for an alliance.

Annamalai is also perceived as close to breakaway AIADMK groups such as those led by O Paneerselvam and TTV Dhinakaran. With the meeting of recently expelled AIADMK leader KA Sengottaiyan with OPS and TTV, Annamalai is trying to convey to the national leadership that the AIADMK is a much weakened party and it would be more prudent to push for a BJP-led alliance with the sundry breakaway groups and smaller parties.

While stating that he was one with the unanimous view that the NDA should win the Assembly election, he pointed to the meeting of the AIADMK breakaway groups at the anniversary of Muthuramalinga Thevar. “I am also waiting eagerly because I joined the BJP and am continuing to be a part of it with the confidence that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah will give ‘pure’ politics. Otherwise there was no need for me to quit my job and be a party cadre,” he said in what was seen as his serving notice to the BJP leadership.

For the central leadership of the BJP, the problem is that Annamalai's strategy failed to win them any seats in Tamil Nadu in the Lok Sabha election of 2024. Indeed, many BJP and AIADMK leaders in Tamil Nadu believe his tactics cost the BJP dearly in an election where the party failed to win a majority on its own.

There is a view that Annamalai is good for the BJP's growth in the long term. But the BJP doesn't have much time to lose as it wants to dislodge the DMK in Tamil Nadu in the coming election.