After two successive resignations, the BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit was rocked by yet another walkout as state minister Sumathi Venkatesh announced her decision on Friday.
“With a heavy heart, I have decided to step down from my responsibilities as Minister of State of BJP, Tamil Nadu, and end my association with the party,” Venkatesh wrote in her resignation letter, which she later posted on her X.
“This decision has come after careful consideration and is not without sadness. I am sincerely grateful to all the party leaders, office bearers and Karyakarta at the national and state levels for their guidance, support and encouragement during my tenure.”
Earlier, former state president K Annamalai and state vice president Karu Nagarajan resigned from the party, plunging the party into a leadership crisis.
HT had earlier reported that Annamalai, who served as Tamil Nadu BJP president between July 2021 and April 2025, attributed his departure from the party to differences in views on Tamil Nadu.
In his resignation letter addressed to BJP national president Nitin Nabin, Annamalai said he joined the BJP six years ago, seeking to bring positive change in Tamil Nadu and improve how politics is conducted in the state.
“More importantly, I wanted to change the idea that politics is a path only for the elite and a select few, and not for the common man. I am extremely grateful to the BJP leadership for trusting a very young and raw man with great responsibility and leadership positions,” he wrote in the letter obtained by the BJP.
“The people of the state were tired of the public political discourse of many decades and were yearning for change. Change came at multiple points in the last decade, but they were unable to stick and soon faded from people’s memories,” he said.
Annamalai said that the national parties had never spoken the language that people in Tamil Nadu understood and he tried to change this belief and achieved “reasonable success” despite the multiple roadblocks it faced from home and abroad (BJP).
Reacting to Annamalai’s resignation and reports of him launching a new party, Tamil Nadu BJP president Nainar Nagendran on Friday dismissed concerns over the resignation and asserted that the party is an ideology-based organisation, and hence the departure will have no impact on his electoral prospects in the state.
“I cannot comment on Annamalai’s resignation. The BJP is not a recently formed party. It is an ideology-based party, and there certainly will not be any impact from this development. Anyone is free to establish a political party. In a democracy, everyone has this right. Annamalai’s resignation from the BJP will not have any impact on the party. The claim of not giving importance to state-level rights is not true,” news agency ANI quoted Nagendran as saying.
