BJP Tamil Nadu president and Coimbatore candidate K Annamalai and a few other members of the party were booked for allegedly violating poll campaign time violation, the police said on Friday (April 12). This comes after the DMK workers and their allies, the Left parties, objected to BJP campaigning beyond the Election Commission’s stipulated time on Thursday night, which led to a quarrel between the two sides at Avarampalayam area, police said.
Following a complaint lodged by a DMK member, Peelamedu police booked cases against four BJP functionaries under various sections of the IPC.
Meanwhile, local DMK functionaries petitioned the district collector seeking action against the BJP candidate for allegedly campaigning beyond the deadline set by the Election Commission.
The BJP has fielded Annamalai from the Coimbatore seat. The BJP candidate has been campaigning aggresively in the constituency where he is up against DMK's Ganapathi Rajkumar, and AIADMK's Singai Ramachandran in a triangular contest.
Coimbatore Lok Sabha seat
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the CPI(M) candidate PR Natarajan won from the Coimbatore seat with 571,150 votes defeating BJP's CP Radhakrishnan. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, ADMK leader P Nagarajan won the seat by defeating BJP candidate CP Radhakrishnan by 42,016 votes.
Coimbatore has been a swing Lok Sabha seat as it keeps changing representatives. Along with traditional parties in the state, it also gave the opportunity to the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1998 and 1999 Lok Sabha elections by sending CP Radhakrishnan to the Parliament. Now, the BJP is again eying the victory, however, Tamil Nadu has been a big challenge for the saffron party which dominates the north region of the country.
(With PTI inputs)
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