Coimbatore Lok Sabha seat, one of 39 constituencies in Tamil Nadu, is set to witness a triangular contest as the third player in the state - Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fielded party state unit chief K Annamalai from the high-profile seat.
Coimbatore, often referred to as the Manchester of South India, is home to 2,185,424 people (2011 census) of which 17.97% live in rural areas and 82.03% in urban areas. 13.38% of population in the constituency is from the Scheduled Caste (SC), while the Scheduled Tribe (ST) population is 0.28%.
It houses six assembly seats - Sulur, Kavundampalayam, Coimbatore North, Coimbatore South, Palladam, and Singanallur.
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.
Candidates in the Coimbatore Constituency-
- BJP- K Annamalai
- AIADMK- Singai Ramachandran
- DMK- Ganapathi Rajkumar
- Naam Tamilar Katchi -Kalamani
Voting date:
Tamil Nadu will vote in a single phase on April 19 and the result will be declared on June 4.
