Coimbatore Lok Sabha Election Results 2024: DMK's Ganapathi Rajkumar defeats Annamalai with a 1,18,068 margin

Tamil Nadu Lok Sabha Election Results 2024: BJP's K Annamalai was defeated by rival DMK's Ganapathi P Rajkumar, who won by a margin of 1,18,068 votes. AIADMK's Singai G Ramachandran is in the third position. Coimbatore, an industrial hub, is among the few Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu where the BJP was hoping to win.

Tamil Nadu, traditionally the battleground of two Dravidian parties - DMK and AIADMK, witnessed a triangular contest this time, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) going all out to gain in the southern state. Here, the BJP chose a former IPS officer-turned-politician K Annamalai to steer the saffron ship.  

In Coimbatore, the second-largest city in Tamil Nadu, the saffron party fielded its firebrand leader and party's state unit chief K Annamalai against Ganapathi P Rajkumar of the ruling DMK, and Singai G Ramachandran of the AIADMK.

India Today-Axis My India's exit polls had projected a close contest in Coimbatore, with a slight edge for DNK's Ganapathi P Rajkumar. 

P Rajkumar, earlier with the AIADMK, was elected as a Corporation councilor in 2021 and Coimbatore Mayor in 2014. He joined the DMK in 2020. Singai G Ramachandran, the youngest among the candidates, heads the AIADMK's IT wing. A win in Coimbatore would have boosted the stature of Annamalai, under whose watch the BJP contested the general elections without its former ally AIADMK.  

Coimbatore, also known as Kovai, falls in Tamil Nadu's western region, which has been the AIADMK's bastion for over four decades. The BJP, too, had some pockets of influence in western Tamil Nadu including Coimbatore, but it never reached a level where the party could emerge victorious. This time, Annamalai, also known as Singham, vowed to win the western belt for the BJP.

Annamalai, a native of western Tamil Nadu, belongs to the dominant Gounder community. After being appointed as BJP's Tamil Nadu chief in 2021, he worked on building the party's strength in the western region. Coimbatore and the Nilgiris are among the regions in western Tamil Nadu that Annamalai focused on to build the party.

In the last two decades, the Left parties have won the Coimbatore seat three times, while the AIADMK held it from 2014 to 2019. The CPI-M's PR Natarajan is the sitting MP, who secured 45.85% votes in 2019 against BJP's CP Radhakrishnan who managed to get 31.47% votes. The saffron party has some base in this city, as it has won the seat twice - in 1996 and 1998. But both times, the party contested the polls in alliance with the AIADMK. Radhakrishnan bagged this seat in 1998 (with 55.85% votes), and 1999 (49.21%).

All 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu went to polls in the first phase on April 19.