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Coimbatore
In Tamil Nadu where Dravidian politics captures all the attention, Coimbatore is an exception as it is considered the hotbed of Hindutva politics in the southern state along with being called as a communist bastion. The city has a heavy presence of RSS and therefore, BJP decided to field its Hindutva firebrand leader and state chief K Annamalai from here as it feels that it has the best chance of winning this seat among all 39 seats of the state.
Voter Demographic
The Coimbatore parliamentary constituency is characterized by a high literacy rate of 75.37 per cent and is predominantly urban in nature. A significant 82.6 per cent of voters (approximately 1,617,785) reside in urban areas, while only 17.4 per cent (about 340,792) are rural dwellers. The constituency's demographic makeup includes a Scheduled Caste population of 13.3 per cent (around 260,491 voters) and a small Scheduled Tribe presence of 0.3 per cent (approximately 5,876 voters).
Voters
Voters
In the 2024 Lok Sabha election 1,372,833 people voted in the Coimbatore constituency. As of the 2019 Parliament Election, Coimbatore had a total of 1,958,577 registered voters spread across 2,046 polling booths. Voter participation has been moderate, with a 63.6 per cent turnout in the 2019 Parliament Election, showing a slight decrease from the 66.9 per cent turnout recorded in the 2016 Assembly Election. This urban-centric constituency reflects the area's industrial and economic significance within Tamil Nadu.
Political History
In 2019 Lok Sabha polls, BJP suffered a drubbing as it didn't win a single seat despite being in an alliance with the AIADMK, who is presently the state's main Opposition party. However, this time BJP is going into the polls with some lesser known parties of the state and with AIADMK struggling with its leadership issues post Jayalalitha's death, the Saffron party aims to take over the main Opposition's space and the result of the Coimbatore can prove as a watershed moment for it because the party has fielded Annamalai who is by far its most popular Tamil Nadu leader.
In the past, BJP has won the Coimbatore LS seat in 1998 and 1999 General Elections, however, for the past three polls, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and AIADMK are winning the seat. In 2019, CPI(M) candidate PR Natarajan defeated BJP's CP Radhakrishnan (who became an MP from here in 1998 and 1999) by a margin of over 170,000 votes.
Notably, since 1952, Congress has bagged the seat on six occasions while CPI and CPI(M) have won four and three times respectively. Incidentally, the state's two biggest parties namely DMK and AIADMK have won only twice and once respectively.
AIADMK’s candidate fielded its IT wing secretary Singai Govindarasu Ramachandran and DMK is represented by Ganapathy P Rajkumar. Notably, CPI(M) hasn't fielded any candidate and is supporting its alliance partner DMK.
Interestingly, in 2021 state Assembly polls, AIADMK won five out of the total six seats that fall under the Coimbatore Parliamentary constituency. The sole remaining seat was won by the BJP.
There were 37 candidates contesting from the constituency, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam candidate Ganapathy Rajkumar P has won the 2024 Lok Sabh's Coimbatore seat with 568,200 votes or 41.39 per cent of the votes. While the BJP candidate Annamalai K managed to secure 32.79 per cent of votes.
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