Chennai: The Tamil Nadu unit of the BJP is planning a major organisational revamp to improve the grassroots structure of the organisation as part of its preparations for the 2026 Assembly elections.
According to highly placed sources in the BJP, the party plans to increase the number of district committees from the present 66 to 78. The state leadership feels that by increasing the number of district units, the party apparatus will have more workers and office-bearers and that would help increase its presence in the state. The BJP has already planned to include 200 new members at the booth level thus spreading its wings across the state, thereby making BJP a powerful entity in Tamil Nadu politics.
The membership campaign of the BJP, which commenced on September 2, is lagging in Tamil Nadu. A senior leader of the party told IANS that the local and mid-level cadres are confused at the ideological shift of the Tamil Nadu BJP which had snapped ties with the AIADMK and this is one of the reasons for the slow progress in membership drive.
The leader said that with coalition politics driving the state, without proper allies, the party will not be able to make an impact in state politics and after the party cut its decades-long association with the AIADMK many grassroots and middle-level workers of the party have gone slow in party activities.
The Tamil Nadu BJP, it may be recalled has positioned itself as an alternative to the Dravidian parties and politics. However, this move has not yielded the desired results and has even antagonised several traditional pockets of the party.
BJP Tamil Nadu state unit is now run by a coordination committee with veteran leader and former MLA, H.Raja heading it as its convenor. This is following the incumbent president, K. Annamalai taking a three-month leave for higher studies in the United Kingdom.
The Tamil Nadu BJP is also planning to rope in a few charismatic people into the party fold aiming for the 2026 Assembly elections. Sources in the party told IANS that feelers have already been sent to a few cinema stars, former cricketers, industrialists and other sportspersons to join the BJP.
With the BJP in Tamil Nadu in the process of increasing its footprints in more areas by increasing the number of district committees and local booth-level committees, the party is facing the Herculean task of breaking the Dravidian mould in Tamil Nadu and catapulting itself into the state politics on its own.
K.M. Pandurangan, a retired professor at a university in the United Kingdom, who taught social sciences, while speaking to IANS said, “In Tamil Nadu, Dravidian ideology is deep-rooted and it is a difficult task to subvert it and pitch in a new ideology. BJP should have continued its alliance with the AIADMK and slowly made inroads in the state, but unfortunately, the sudden snapping of ties with AIADMK has upset the fortunes of the BJP in Tamil Nadu“.
He further said that the national parties, including the Congress and the BJP, don’t have any strength on their own to upset the present system in Tamil Nadu.
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