The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday appointed K Annamalai as its Tamil Nadu state unit president. Annamalai is the former 2011 batch IPS officer of the Karnataka cadre. Annamalai had been the police superintendent of Chikkamagaluru and Udupi districts and before he quit the police service in September 2019, he had also served as deputy police commissioner in Bengaluru (south).
He became the youngest president of Tamil Nadu BJP ever, replacing L Murugan, who has joined the Modi government as a minister of state on Wednesday. The 37-year-old leader is the first to rise to the position in the Tamil Nadu unit within a year of joining the party. Annamalai joined the BJP in August last year.
Belonging to Karur district in the Kongu region of the state, he hails from an agricultural family and belongs to the influential Gounder community. Kongu belt in western Tamil Nadu is among the regions where the BJP has pockets of influence.
Annamalai is an engineering graduate from a prestigious Coimbatore-based college. He also completed his MBA degree from the Indian Institute of Management in Lucknow (IIM-Lucknow).
With the Saffron party's ally AIADMK backing him, though Annamalai aggressively campaigned in Aravakurichi constituency in his home district, he lost by a margin of 24,816 votes with DMK nominee R Elango emerging victorious.
The BJP is banking on the young leader to boost the party's standing in the Dravidian state where it has long been a minor player.
