The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be contesting in 20 Assembly seats in Tamil Nadu, as well as one Lok Sabha seat from Kanyakumari where by-elections are due.
The seat-sharing arrangement with the ruling AIADMK party was finalised on Friday, 5 March.
As per IANS, state BJP leadership was expecting more than 25 seats. However, the AIADMK leadership was not ready to part with more than 20 seats.
MORE DETAILS
BJP leader and former Karaikkudi MLA, H Raja, reportedly told IANS:
“We deserve more seats but we got only 20 seats. Our aim is to win maximum seats out of these and become a major player in the Assembly.”
Meanwhile, BJP Tamil Nadu state president L Murugan, according to IANS is highly optimistic about the party's prospects in the Assembly polls and said:
“BJP has made deep inroads in the Tamil heartlands and these grassroot-level organisational work will be transferred into votes.”
"Also, the performance of the Modi government at the Centre has given the BJP a great advantage. We will surprise poll pundits and political observers in this election and will win maximum seats," Murugan said.
The state will be going to polls on 6 April and the results will be declared on 2 May.
Elections will be held for 234 seats in Tamil Nadu with the Congress-DMK and BJP-AIADMK alliance being the two major groups that are pitted against each other.
THE KANYAKUMARI BY-POLL
The party veteran leader and former Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan, will be contesting the bypoll, and fighting for the Kanyakumari seat for the ninth time. He lost the seat in the 2019 general elections by a margin of three lakh votes to H Vasanthakumar of Congress.
Vasanthakumar died due to complications from COVID-19 on 28 August 2020.
Pon Radhakrishnan told IANS: "We will win the seat this time. There were certain communal issues, which were fanned in the last elections and hence I lost. However, we will make it up and wrest the seat from the Congress."
Union Home Minister Amit Shah will be personally overseeing the Kanyakumari Lok Sabha elections and is set to reach the city on Sunday, 7 March, morning to conduct meeting with party workers, reported IANS.
(With inputs from IANS.)
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