The ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) registered a landslide victory in the urban local body elections, winning all the 21 corporations, municipalities and the town panchayats. While the opposition AIADMK finished distant second, the Tamil Nadu unit of the BJP claimed to be the third largest party in the state with over 5 per cent vote share.
BJP’s state president K. Annamalai during a press conference on Tuesday claimed that the BJP has emerged the “third largest party” after the DMK and the AIADMK. However, as per the statistics available on the State Election Commission website, BJP’s overall share in the civic polls has increased marginally just by 0.7 per cent as compared to 2011. The victory in Kanyakumari district made the BJP’s tally in the civic polls go up. Of the 308 seats the BJP won, 200 were from Kanyakumari, thus reducing the national party to a single district party in Tamil Nadu.
Incidentally, the number of corporation wards which was 820 in 2011 had increased to 1,374 in 2022. But the BJP, which won just four corporation wards in 2011, had managed to win in 22 wards in this election. Again, the total number of municipality wards which was 3,697 in 2011 has increased to 3,843 in 2022. The BJP which won in 37 out of 3,697 wards in 2011 had increased its tally to 56 out of 3,843 wards in 2022, which is only 1.4 per cent. Also, as most of the town panchayats have been upgraded in the past 10 years, the total number of wards in town panchayats has been reduced from 8,299 to 7,621. But the BJP which claims to have finished third, won only in 230 wards out of 7,621. In 2011, the BJP had won in 185 town panchayat wards of 8,299.
Also, the BJP could not open its account in 10 districts. Apparently, the BJP which claimed to be strong in Coimbatore, Nagercoil and Tiruppur did not manage to win big in these regions. While it won in four wards in Nagercoil, the BJP lost to the ruling DMK alliance.
While the party had all its hopes in Coimbatore, where Annamalai, Union Minister of State L. Murugan and MLA Vanathi Srinivasan invested a lot of time campaigning, the BJP performed badly. In Coimbatore, the saffron party got fewer than 1,000 votes in 80 out of the 97 wards it contested and less than 500 votes in 34 wards out of the 97 it contested. The BJP scored more than 2,000 votes only in four of the 97 wards it contested in Coimbatore.
Meanwhile, the party claims that there is an acceptance among the people in Chennai for the BJP, with its lone councillor in the 134th ward in Chennai corporation. BJP’s Uma Anandhan, who once hailed Godse for killing Mahatma Gandhi, defeated the Congress and the AIADMK. But the one seat it won in Chennai corporation, where DMK has more than 90 per cent seats, does not make a huge difference in the votes polled by the BJP in the urban local body polls.