With the Bharatiya Janata Party eyeing to gain ground in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, the Coimbatore Lok Sabha seat has become the talk of the town. The seat is being hailed as one of the high-profile seats.
It is one of the 39 constituencies in the state which will witness a triangular contest. The BJP has fielded its key player and party state unit chief K Annamalai.
The Congress has not fielded any candidate from the constituency with the view to support the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam— a party which is part of the INDIA bloc. DMK candidate from Coimbatore is Ganapathi Rajkumar. AIADMK (All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) has fielded Singai Ramachandran and Kalamani will be contesting on a ticket from Naam Tamilar Katchi (NTK).
Coimbatore which is often referred to as the Manchester of South India, is home to 2,185,424 people (2011 census) of which 17.97 per cent live in rural areas and 82.03 per cent in urban areas. Scheduled Caste holds 13.38 per cent of the population, while the Scheduled Tribe (ST) population is 0.28 per cent.
The Lok Sabha constituency has 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 allowed the BJP 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.
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