Raadhika Sarathkumar is up against DMDK chairman Vijayakanth’s son in Virudhunagar on the BJP’s final list for Tamil Nadu
On Friday, the BJP unveiled its final and second list of candidates running in Tamil Nadu’s Lok Sabha elections. There are 15 names in the second list.
Four of the saffron party’s partners are running under the party’s “Lotus” emblem while the party is fighting in 20 seats on its own.
Notably, actress Raadhika Sarathkumar from the Virudhunagar seat has been nominated by the BJP.
Shortly after her husband, R Sarathkumar, combined his 17-year-old All India Samathuva Makkal Katchi with the BJP on March 12, she became a member of the party.
On March 15, she later met Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a public gathering.
She will face off against Vijay Prabhakaran, the DMDK candidate and the late actor and party founder Vijayakanth’s son.
In the Lok Sabha elections, the DMDK and the AIADMK, headed by Edappadi Palaniswamy, will form an alliance.
As anticipated, B John Pandian, the president of Tamizhaga Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam, will run from Tenkasi in the election. He will face Dr. Rani Srikumar of the DMK and Puthiya Thamizhagam, who is headed by K Krishnasamy and is a member of the AIADMK alliance.
The BJP state general secretary, Raama Sreenivasan, was supposed to run in Trichy, but Madurai was chosen instead. BJP officials in Trichy strongly objected to Srinivasan’s nomination, saying the party should have chosen a candidate from the district. Trichy has now been turned over to TTV Dhinakaran’s AMMK.
Another BJP state general secretary, Karuppu M Muruganandam, has been fielded from Thanjavur, where he will face DMDK candidate Karuppu M Muruganandam and DMK candidate S Murasoli.
The candidate from the Chidambaram Reserved Constituency is P Karthiyayini, a former mayor of Vellore Corporation and state general secretary of the BJP. Thol Thirumavalavan, the president of VCK, is her opponent.
State vice president KP Ramalingam will run from Namakkal. Pon V. Balaganapathy (Tiruvallur (reserved)), RC Paul Kanagaraj (Chennai North), A Ashvathaman (Tiruvannamalai), AP Muruganandam (Tiruppur), K Vasantharajan (Pollachi), VV Senthinathan (Karur), and SGM Ramesh (Nagapattinam (Reserved)) are the other candidates and the constituencies assigned to them. Devanathan Yadav, the head of Indhiya Makkal Kalvi Munnetra Kazhagam, is going to run from the Sivaganga seat.
A Namassivayam, a union territory minister in the Puducherry administration, has been fielded by it.
On Thursday, the party announced the names of its candidates for nine Lok Sabha seats.
The Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), led by Dr. Ramadoss, has been allocated 10 seats by the party among its allies, while other lesser partners have also received some seats.
On Thursday, the Bharatiya Janata Party nominated Union Minister L Murugan from the Nilgiris and President K Annamalai of Tamil Nadu from Coimbatore.
It proposed Pon Radhakrishnan, an ex-union minister from Kanniyakumari, which he represented in 2014, and Tamilisai Soundararajan, a former governor of Telangana, for the Chennai South seat.
