Tamil Nadu BJP leader K. Annamalai has decided to take a three-month break from active politics to participate in a leadership fellowship offered by the United Kingdom’s Foreign Office in London.
Annamalai’s application for the Sevenning Gurukula Fellowship Program for Leadership and Excellence has been accepted and she has made up her mind to participate, it has been reported.
The fellowship starts in mid-September and lasts until December. He is believed to have conveyed to the BJP high command his desire to go ahead with this project, which is considered valuable.
However, it is not yet clear whether the BJP has accepted Annamalai’s leave application. If he is on a three-month hiatus, the BJP will decide whether to appoint an acting president and ask him to look after the state responsibilities or find a replacement. Leadership will decide.
Annamalai applied for the fellowship at the beginning of this year and attended the interview in Delhi in May, according to information from BJP Vatarath.
Annamalai applied for the fellowship as the founder of the ‘We the Leaders’ Foundation, which he started in 2019 after his voluntary retirement from the Indian Police Service.
After he joined the party in August 2020, Annamalai’s rise to the BJP has been brisk.
Within a year, he became a favorite of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He was made the state unit president and given the freedom to run the party. His outspoken nature and confrontational nature have made him a polarizing figure in Tamil Nadu since becoming BJP state president in 2021.
In the bifurcated state of Tamil Nadu, Annamalai brought the party into the limelight with his relentless involvement in the 2024 elections, though he was ridiculed for his claims that the BJP crossed 20 percent of the vote.
In the 2024 elections, Annamalai lost the Coimbatore Lok Sabha seat despite the BJP securing 11 percent votes without an alliance with the DMK or the AIADMK.
