Annamalai, Kishan Reddy, Vijayendra—why BJP’s war horses in South are running out of steam

Now that PM Modi is in his third term, perhaps the BJP is losing the will to fight in the southern states. It would rather consolidate its gains in the north.

Representational image | Prime Minister Narendra Modi holds a roadshow with Tamil Nadu BJP Chief K Annamalai (right) and the party's South Chennai candidate Tamilisai Soundararajan (left) ahead of Lok Sabha polls | ANI

Union health minister JP Nadda is shedding weight: that’s the chatter in the Bharatiya Janata Party. Not politically, of course. His term as party president, as extended by the national executive, ended on 30 June.

His term hasn’t been extended—officially, at least. However, he continues to function as BJP president, presumably in a caretaker capacity. So, no, he isn’t shedding his political weight. He is just getting fitter. As per the chatter, Nadda has lost 13-14 kg, almost as much as his Cabinet colleague CR Patil has, thanks to a common doctor’s diet regimen.

Donald Trump can continue to eat McDonald’s burgers and drink Coca-Cola—and even get his next health department head Robert F Kennedy Jr’s endorsement—but Nadda would have none of it. It’s so nice to see India’s health minister lead by example.

BJP leaders are, therefore, happy about his weight loss. What they’re getting anxious about is how their party is fast shedding the weight that it gained in the southern states over the past few years.

 Annamalai’s strange sabbatical

Some day in 2020-21, I was talking to a key BJP functionary from the south about its prospects south of the Vindhyas. They are low-hanging fruits, he said. I believed him because Congress had been shrinking all along and there was space for a national party to fill in. As it is, the trees seem to be growing taller and the fruits hanging higher.

Look at Tamil Nadu. K Annamalai is back from the UK. As the president of the Tamil Nadu BJP, he had created such buzz about the BJP that it once looked like a veritable alternative to the Dravidian parties. A setback in the Lok Sabha elections and it has virtually given up. Why would the party let its state president go out for three months for a Chevening fellowship at Oxford University?

He is back now, but the sting is missing. He hasn’t uttered a word against the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) since his return. Before he left for his sabbatical, he was giving sleepless nights to all major players in Tamil Nadu. He was on a mission to dislodge Dravidian parties from their safe perches.

The only justification one can offer for the BJP high command permitting Annamalai’s sabbatical could be their rethink of the party’s strategy in Tamil Nadu: whittle down his ambitions and prepare to get embedded with one of the two major players, the DMK and the AIADMK.

Well, the DMK might have many issues with its allies but it may not be in a tearing hurry to abandon them. Chief Minister MK Stalin’s Dravidian/sub-national versus North Indian/Hindi-Hindutva politics, coupled with his son’s takes on Sanatan Dharma, rules out a tie-up with the BJP in the immediate future. The AIADMK’s splinters—VK Sasikala, O Panneerselvam, and TTV Dinakaran—together with smaller outfits could be an alternative for the BJP, but it seems to have given up after drawing a blank in the Lok Sabha elections.

So, what’s left for Annamalai? His silence on the AIADMK, preceded by his virtual banishment to Oxford for three months, seems to suggest that his party is hoping to revive its alliance with EK Palaniswami-led AIADMK in the next Assembly elections.

Annamalai didn’t quit the Indian Police Service and sweated blood to hang on to EPS’s coattails, did he? His predecessor, L Murugan, was made a Union minister a day before Annamalai replaced him. Murugan was later nominated to the Rajya Sabha. He lost the 20204 Lok Sabha elections and was still retained as a minister. Murugan’s predecessor, Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan, was appointed Telangana governor almost seven months before he succeeded her. Her predecessor, Pon Radhakrishnan, became a minister at the Centre after he was replaced.

And here is Annamalai. No Rajya Sabha, no ministry for him. Over four years after he joined the BJP and made it a veritable challenger in the Dravidian land—electoral results notwithstanding—Annamalai must reconcile himself to the fact that his party shows signs of tiring in Tamil Nadu. It would instead like to play ‘adjustment politics’, just to be in play in the next Assembly elections.

The BJP high command may be mistaken, though. Actor Vijay, who has founded the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), is no Kamal Haasan whose screen popularity is inversely proportionate to his electoral impact. A major poll consultancy firm’s recent survey, as told to me, shows Vijay swinging over 20 per cent votes. And it’s early days yet.

Vijay has already declared the BJP his ideological enemy and the DMK, the political enemy. If this survey is any indication, the TVK, if it enters into an alliance with the AIADMK and parties like the PMK, would be a major force in the 2026 Assembly polls. The BJP’s attempt to curb Annamalai’s fighter instinct to build an independent base for the party amounts to undermining his politics and him. He isn’t meant for the adjustment politics that the BJP seems to be pursuing now.

BJP’s pause button for the south

It’s not just about Tamil Nadu. Look at the BJP’s strategies in the rest of South India, state after state. It seems to have pushed the pause button on its expansion plans. In Andhra Pradesh, it made a smart move to junk Jagan Mohan Reddy and join hands with Chandrababu Naidu and Pawan Kalyan.

Entering into an alliance with established parties used to be the BJP’s strategy of getting a foothold for expansion. No more. Kalyan, once a fan of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Charu Majumdar, has suddenly become a big protector of the Sanatan Dharma. The BJP may feel happy that there is a new Hindutva flag-bearer in Andhra but it would be mistaken if it believes that Kalyan could become its face one day. He—together with or separately from Naidu— may end up using the BJP to usurp the Hindutva votes in Andhra and then ensure that the BJP has no legs to stand on electorally in Andhra in the long run.

In Telangana, the state where the BJP dreamt big not long ago, it seems to be tiring. Just rewind a bit. There was a time when it became the principal Opposition party and looked set to dislodge K Chandrashekhar Rao’s Bharat Rashtra Samithi. The BJP suddenly dropped the anchor. It dumped Bandi Sanjay Kumar barely five months before the Assembly elections and replaced him with G Kishan Reddy as state president. If the Congress was accusing the BJP of being hand in glove with KCR, the move to sack Bandi Sanjay only lent credence to it. It got amplified when Kishan Reddy continued to be a Union minister, giving the impression that the BJP was a non-serious player. The rest is history.

The BJP lost the way in the Assembly elections. In Kishan Reddy’s Lok Sabha constituency of Secunderabad, the party lost in all seven constituencies, including two where it lost security deposits. Worse, in Amberpet, Kishan Reddy’s Assembly constituency, the BJP’s vote share came down to 34 per cent, from 55.9 per cent in 2014 when Reddy had won from there. In Bandi Sanjay’s Lok Sabha constituency, Karimnagar, the BJP could save deposits in only three of the seven constituencies. Sanjay himself lost in the Karimnagar Assembly constituency. In the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won eight of the 17 constituencies but the party was expecting to do much better.

Results aside, Kishan Reddy continues to be a Union Cabinet Minister and Bandi Sanjay a minister of state as home minister Amit Shah’s deputy. Even after electoral setbacks, Reddy continues to be Telangana BJP chief. “He has been a disaster for the BJP, but how come Modiji and Amit Shahji refuse to see it?” a Telangana BJP leader asked me last month. “Loyalty,” I responded. One word was enough to silence him. He looked amused though.

Let’s look at other south Indian states. The BJP high command looks so confused in Karnataka. First, it went about fixing the ‘Yediyurappa problem’ by replacing him with Basavaraj Bommai as the CM. The party lost the Assembly elections. Modi-Shah then sought to buy peace with Yediyurappa by appointing his son, Vijayendra, the state BJP president. In the Lok Sabha elections six months later, even after aligning with the Janata Dal (Secular), the BJP went down by eight seats.

In the recent Assembly by-polls in three seats, the Congress made a clean sweep. Even the son of Basavaraj Bommai lost from Shiggaon. Basangouda Patil Yatnal, an old Yediyurappa detractor, has been leading a vocal group of BJP leaders who want a change in leadership.

Guess what happened after the BJP issued him a show-cause notice for indiscipline? His six-page reply was a stinker that talked at length about “adjustment politics” by the Yediyurappa family. Last heard, the BJP high command was pleading with him to “tone it down”. The high command can’t affront Yatnal but doesn’t want to offend the Yediyurappa family either. Karnataka CM and his deputy, Siddaramaiah and DK Shiv Kumar, may have conflicting ambitions but they are both smiling at how the BJP just can’t find a solution to its intra-family war.

As for Kerala, the BJP might have gone to town about winning the Thrissur seat in the Lok Sabha elections. But the party knows it was Suresh Gopi’s personal charisma. Palakkad Assembly by–polls last month gave a reality check. The BJP’s vote share, which went up from 29 per cent in 2016 to 35 per cent in 2021 when E Sreedharan was its candidate, came down to 28.63 per cent in the 2024 by–polls. It’s still a long, uphill climb for the BJP in Kerala.

Meanwhile, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who gave a scare to Shashi Tharoor in Thiruvananthapuram before losing by a whisker in the last Lok Sabha elections, finds himself forgotten. The former minister found no place in the Modi cabinet after the polls and wasn’t even renominated to the Rajya Sabha.

Bigger roadblocks

So, what has gone wrong with the BJP’s southern march? It’s not because Nadda is focusing on getting fitter; he was the captain in name alone. It’s probably that the BJP was relying so heavily on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Now that he is into his third—and probably last—term, the party is losing the will to fight in the southern states. Or probably it’s tired and disheartened. So, it would rather consolidate its gains in the north. Maybe.

The southern expansion plan is set to face bigger roadblocks. Whenever the Centre decides to go for Census and follows it up with delimitation of constituencies that it’s so eager for, the BJP will face more resistance in the south. Its political adversaries will have more ammunition to corner it as a Hindi-Hindu, north Indian party.

No wonder, the BJP hasn’t only pushed the pause button on its southern march. It’s making a silent retreat.

DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.

(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)