Nainar is new TN BJP chief

Three-time BJP legislator Nainar Nagenthiran was elected the new president of Tamil Nadu BJP on Saturday.

A lawmaker from Tirunelveli, Nainar replaces K Annamalai, whose replacement was a key condition the AIADMK is learnt to have set to return to the BJP-led NDA fold in the state.

Nainar faces the uphill task of leading the saffron forces in a tough electoral battleground, ahead of the 2026 Assembly elections.

Interestingly, Nainar is a former AIADMK MLA, who won on the AIADMK ticket in 2001 and 2011, before he switched over to the BJP. He continues to have friendly ties with the AIADMK leaders.

He was the only nomination received for the election to the party’s top post in the state.

As Nainar took charge of office a day after the AIADMK and the BJP announced a pre-poll alliance for the 2026 elections, DMK president and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin said the coalition was doomed to fail. He said ‘hunger for power’ was what brought the AIADMK and the BJP together.

Stalin asked the AIADMK how it would honour the claims to oppose common undergraduate medical exam entrance test (NEET), imposition of Hindi by the three-language formula and Waqf Act and delimitation process. “Are these issues part of the Common Minimum Programme between the AIADMK and the BJP?” he asked.

Stalin pointed out that Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who was in Chennai yesterday, did not speak about any of these issues. “Shah did not allow the AIADMK leadership to speak. Instead, Shah used the press conference only to criticise the DMK. The AIADMK-BJP alliance is doomed to fail. It was the people of Tamil Nadu who handed repeated defeats to this coalition. Now, Shah has reconstituted the same failed alliance,” Stalin added.