.jpeg&c=0&w=700 "BMW M3 CS Touring estate teased")
Chennai: Opposition parties in the State have all started devising their strategy for the next Assembly elections in mid-2026 and most of them are planning to launch their campaigns more than a year ahead of polls, starting with the prime opposition party, the AIADMK, whose general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami has already drawn up his detail tour plan starting by February 10.
Soon after that, the BJP State president K Annamalai might also join the campaign bandwagon by touring various districts and explain to the people the ‘misdeeds and corruption’ of the ruling party though the actual elections are more than a year away and the ground situation might change by then.
The nascent Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam, too, has started talking about an elaborate tour of its founder president Vijay, who is believed to have decided to start meeting people personally though his last public outing at Parandur in Kanchipuram district to express solidarity with those protesting the setting up of Chennai’s second airport ended with a less than 10 minute oration from atop a campaign vehicle.
Assuring his support to the villagers who are opposing the takeover of their lands, houses and livelihood to facilitate the construction of the greenfield airport, Vijay told them that he would be back, indicating that he would be touring the districts.
With the opposition leaders, each one of them an aspirant for the Chief Minister’s post, hitting the roads and spewing venom against the ruling party and the present State government, the State will be gripped by election fever quite early but lose the ferver prematurely.
Since the actual issues that the State would be grappling with at the time of the polls could differ from the present times, the campaigns would be a generalized hate mongering exercise aimed at defaming the ruling party and seeking the people’s mandate to usher in a change in administration by exploiting the anti-incumbency sentiments.
However, the opposition parties would face the challenge of convincing the people that the government had done nothing for them during its term when the ruling party had already started presenting itself as a benevolent political outfit by highlighting the slew of welfare schemes that it had launched during the present tenure and stressing on their claim that every family in the State would be a beneficiary of one or the other schemes.
That the campaign has been going on since the party took charge of the government in 2021 and that too through the party’s network of members, cadre and grassroots workers, supported by an efficient social media team, is another setback for the opposition to create an anti-incumbency wave.
Finally the opposition camp that is going to play the anti-incumbency card and anti-DMK sentiment is splintered in such a way that the votes are going to be shared by the many parties, while the ruling dispensation has not only consolidated its vote bank but has also kept its band of allies with it.
