The party campaign was officially launched by BJP visionary and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who carried a road show at Kanyakumari Beach Road on Sunday in order to succeed in ensuring the party candidate and former Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan’s victory.
Amit Shah also executed a door-to-door crusade in 11 houses in the Sucheendran district of Kanyakumari.
Pon Radhakrishnan won the 2014 election and became Minister of State for Shipping for the Union Government. He was responsible for bringing the port of Colachel and the trans-shipment hub of Kanyakumari and several other development programmes.
Pon Radhakrishnan said, “We are fighting the election with full confidence and I feel that the acceptability of the Narendra Modi government and my own close proximity with the people of Kanyakumari will help me to sail through smoothly in the elections.”
Pon Radhakrishnan lost over than 3 lakh votes in the 2019 general election to his counterpart Congress leader H Vasanthakumar. The passing of Vasanthakumar has led to a by-election in the voting district.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to arrive in the voting district for campaiging but his itinerary has not yet been resolved.
BJP state president L Murugan told IANS, “Pon Radhakrishnan is a very popular leader of Tamil Nadu and was the state president of the BJP. He has good grassroots connect in the constituency and we expect him to win this election.”
The senior leaders of the BJP and Union ministers Smriti Irani, Piyush Goel, Nitin Gadkari, Rajnath Singh and Nirmala Seetharaman are set to visit the constituency within the next few days.
Party national general secretary CT Ravi who is in charge of Tamil Nadu while speaking to IANS said, “We are expecting nothing less than victory at Kanyakumari. We have stitched our combine of AIADMK, BJP and PMK and this combine will bring us victory. Congress is not a force to reckon with at the national level and people are wise enough to vote for the BJP and become part of the national bandwagon.”
With Pon Radhakrishnan fighting a tough battle ,the Congress is likely to field H Vasanthakumar’s son Vijay Vasanth in a bid to retain the seat.