Chennai: With about ten months to go for next year’s Lok Sabha elections, the Tamil Nadu unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party has planned a padayatra starting later this month, to reach voters from across the state. ThePrint has learnt.
State BJP president K. Annamalai will lead the walkathon, which is set to start on 28 July from the temple town of Rameshwaram, in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
The ‘En mann en makkal‘ [my land, my people] yatra which will span 200 days and will see the participation of Annamalai, a former IPS officer, on the road for 120 days, has been divided into five phases, to cover 39 Lok Sabha constituencies and 249 assembly constituencies, ThePrint has learnt. The party is scheduled to have 11 mega public meetings during different phases of the yatra, which is expected to see the participation of national leaders and cabinet ministers. The padayatra is scheduled to conclude on 11 January next year in Chennai.
According to sources in Tamil Nadu BJP, the first phase begins from Rameshwaram and will continue for 26 days, culminating in a public meeting at Tirunelveli before the first break. The choice of Rameshwaram as the starting point was natural, say members of the BJP.
Swami Vivekananda in 1893 had started and finished his historic trip to US from Rameshwaram, which during the ongoing Hindu holy month of Shravana, Rameshwaram is the most apt place to start this yatra, according to the state president of the BJP’s spiritual and temple development wing, M. Nachiappan.
The BJP has invited all its alliance partners in the state, including the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) to join the inaugural event of the padayatra in Rameshwaram, party sources told ThePrint.
The padayatra will have two focused agendas, according to senior BJP leaders.
“The yatra will talk about nine years of Modi sarkar [government], The second aim is to highlight the failures of the DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam] rule [in Tamil Nadu] in the past two years,” said BJP state vice-president Narayanan Thirupathy.
According to party leaders, the yatra will see Annamalai walk within each constituency and hold meetings at gram sabhas and street corners. A complaints box is planned to be set up for the public to share their grievances.
The BJP, which had just 3.66 percentage vote share in the state in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, and won four seats in the 2021 assembly elections, has been aggressively trying to expand its footprint in the state.
It has also been hitting out at the ruling DMK, with allegations of graft. According to senior BJP leaders ThePrint spoke to, the padayatra will continue to focus on “exposing the DMK’s evils”, including alleged hate politics and dynasty politics.
Responding to the allegations, DMK spokesperson Salem Dharanidaran told ThePrint that “Since 2021, when the DMK came to power, Tamil Nadu has improved multifold in socio-economic development, industrial growth as well as in administrative capability.”
He added: “Unlike BJP, which resorts to rhetoric, we have data to substantiate that Tamil Nadu’s debt to GDP has reduced, Tamil Nadu’s revenue deficit has reduced, ease of doing business in the state has improved from 12th spot to 3rd spot. We have fulfilled most of our poll promises, unlike BJP which has not fulfilled 70 percent of its poll promise. People can not be fooled and Annamalai must stop trying to fool people.”
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Ride on ‘simhavahanam’ to collect complaints, expose ‘evil’ DMK
BJP sources told ThePrint that during the padayatra, Annamalai is expected to cover two constituencies every day, with the first phase being spent in Ramanathapuram, Sivaganga, parts of Madurai, Theni, Virudhunagar, Tuticorin and Kanyakumari, ending with a public rally in Tirunelveli on 22 August.
While Annamalai is scheduled to walk within each constituency, he will be travelling from one constituency to another in a chariot, which has been named the ‘simhavahanam‘, or ‘Lion Chariot’.
“Bharatmata [Mother India] and Goddess Adiparasakthi [a Hindu deity] have a lion as their vahana [ride] and Adiparasakthi uses the vahana to destroy evil forces. Similarly in Tamil Nadu, there are evil forces and so our thalaivar [leader] will embark on the trip to destroy the evil forces,” said state president of the BJP’s sports wing and co-in charge of the padyatra, Amar Prasad Reddy.
The party also plans to set up a complaint box, “Vidiyala, Mudiyala“, or “no dawn is seen” — a dig at the DMK government which uses the tagline “Vidiyal Arasu” — meaning the government that has brought the new dawn for the state.
“People can come and share their grievances and the BJP will try to address each of the issues,” said Reddy.
During the yatra the state president is also to release 10 lakh copies of books detailing the Union government’s welfare measures for Tamil Nadu, while Annamalai will personally write letters to one crore families highlighting the works of the Modi government and urging them to vote for the party in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, Reddy added.
Senior BJP leaders told ThePrint that so far the party has got a great response from the public, adding that over 2.5 lakh people have already registered to join the yatra. According to the party sources, 18 teams have been working for the past two months to plan the event and necessary permission requests have also been submitted to the district administration and the police commissioner.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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