KARUR: BJP state vice president and the former IPS officer Annamalai sustained a thrashing defeat in the Aravakurichi assembly constituency in Karur district in the 2021 Tamil Nadu state legislative assembly elections.
Many heads turned towards the Aravakurichi assembly constituency after the announcement of BJP state vice president and the former IPS officer Annamalai contesting in the Tamil Nadu assembly polls. Soon Aravakurichi became a much-anticipated constituency owing to BJP's Annamalai.
But political experts suggested that it was a wrong move by BJP and Annamalai to contest from the Aravakurichi assembly segment as the constituency has around 50,000 minority voters who have always put their weight behind DMK, making Aravakurichi one of the strongholds of the Dravidian major.
Despite many suggesting Annamalai to contest from a different constituency, the cop turned politician decided to stick with his decision and went on to run for the Aravakurichi assembly seat in the Tamil Nadu legislative polls.
As expected, it was DMK candidate Monjanur Elango came out victorious in the Aravakurichi state assembly election defeating the BJP candidate Annamalai by a hefty margin of 24,816 votes. At the end of 31 rounds of intense counting, DMK's Elango received a total of 93,369 votes (52.72%) including 1,154 postal votes. Whereas his BJP counterpart Annamalai managed to get 68,553 votes (38.71%) including 638 postal votes.
The victory of DMK was an expected one, as the Pallapatti town panchayat in Aravakurichi has more than 40,000 Muslim community votes which account for about 25% of the total votes in the constituency who are enraged with BJP's 'Anti-Muslim' laws including CAA and NRC.
Apart from that, the reason behind Annamalai's thrashing defeat was no one but the 'foul-mouthed' IPS himself, said the sources. Since the beginning, Annamalai was being too vocal and critical in both the constituency and with his own party workers during the campaigning which raised a lot of eyebrows. After the Pallapatti people refused entry for the BJP candidate, he came down heavily at them, where his downfall began. Later, he went on to abuse and threaten the DMK leader Senthil Balaji, which was in a bad taste.
As the foul-mouthed Annamalai refused to apologise for his talks and behaviour, it enraged the people more which eventually led to his defeat to another rookie. With this victory, DMK has retained the Aravakurichi assembly segment and has proven its stronghold among other political parties.