Vibha Sharma
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, September 1
Not being able to make much of an impression in two southern states — Tamil Nadu and Kerala — in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP appears to be strengthening base down-South in a somewhat unconventional way.
While the party has chosen prominent Muslim face Arif Mohammed Khan as the Governor of Kerala, it has sent its Tamil Nadu party chief Tamilisai Soundararajan to the Telangana Raj Bhavan.
The appointment of a “relatively young” Soundararajan came as a bit of surprise. She has been unsuccessful in all her electoral forays — Assembly and Parliament. In 2019 General Election, she unsuccessfully fought against DMK Kanimozhi from the Thoothukudi constituency.
Soundararajan, who has been the Tamil Nadu state president of the party since 2014, was quoted as saying that she would proudly quit the leadership as she was instrumental in taking its membership to 44.5 lakh in the state.
It is expected that appointing her as the Governor will pave the way for ushering in new leadership and building pro-BJP sentiment in Tamil Nadu and Telangana. While the post is supposed to be non-political, observers point to recent utterances by J&K Governor Satyapal Malik to point “blurring of lines”.
Increasing the BJP footprint in Kerala and Tamil Nadu are high on the agenda of chief Amit Shah. He also launched the party’s membership drive from South, where, barring Karnataka and now to an extent Telengana, the BJP still has some way to go.
Kerala, a state with substantive minority population, offered stiff resistance to the saffron pitch despite active mobilisation around the issue of women’s entry to Sabrimala. It is here that Khan, who kicked off his eventful political career may help. Khan has been an aggressive critic of Islamic fundamentalism.
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/2ZHOlww
via Today’s News Headlines
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