State BJP leaders take stock of Lok Sabha poll performance

A meeting of BJP leaders was held here on Thursday to discuss the national party’s rout in the recent Lok Sabha elections in the state.

The meeting, held at party headquarters ‘Kamalalayam,’ was chaired by BJP Tamil Nadu in-charge P Muralidhar Ra BJP state unit president Tamilisai Soundararajan, former  Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan, senior leader H Raja and others took part in the meeting. Though the BJP-led NDA swept the polls across the country andretained power for a second term, it fared poorly in Tamil Nadu. The BJP faced the polls as part of the AIADMK-led alliance, which also had the DMDK, TMC, PMK and Puthiya Tamizhagam in it. 

The BJP contested in five Parliamentary seats —Sivaganga, Coimbatore, Ramanathapuram, Kanniyakumari and Thoothukudi —and lost all of them. The alliance managed to win only in Theni Lok Sabha seat, where  AIADMK candidate P Raveendranath Kumar, son of Deputy Chief Minister  O Panneerselvam, won against EVKS Elangovan of the Congress. The DMK-led combine, which had Congress, CPI, CPM, MDMK, IUML and IJK, won 37 of the 38 Lok Sabha seats and emerged as the third largest party in the Lok Sabha.Former Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan and Tamilisai lost in Kanniyakumari and Thoothukudi respectively by huge margins.