After two back-to-back resignations, the Tamil Nadu unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been rattled by another exit as state secretary Sumathi Venkatesh announced her decision on Friday.
“With a heavy heart, I have decided to step down from my responsibilities as State Secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Tamil Nadu, and conclude my association with the party,” Venkatesh wrote in her resignation letter that she later posted on her X handle.
“This decision has come after careful thought and is not without sadness. I am sincerely grateful to all party leaders, office bearers, and karyakartas at both the national and state levels for their guidance, support, and encouragement during my tenure.”
Earlier, former state chief K Annamalai and state vice president Karu Nagarajan resigned from the party, plunging the party into a leadership crisis.
Annamalai, who served as Tamil Nadu BJP chief between July 2021 to April 2025, attributed his departure from the party to differences in views regarding Tamil Nadu, HT reported earlier.
In the resignation letter addressed to BJP national president Nitin Nabin, Annamalai said he joined the BJP six years ago, seeking to bring in a positive change to Tamil Nadu and improve how politics is conducted in the state.
“Most importantly, I wanted to change the notion that politics is a path only for the elite and a select few, not for the common man. I am extremely thankful to the BJP leadership for trusting a very young and raw man with great responsibility and leadership positions,” he wrote in the letter accessed by HT.
“The people of the state were fatigued by the general political discourse for many decades and yearned for a change. The change came in at multiple points in the past decade, but they could not hold their ground and quickly faded from people’s memories”, he said.
Annamalai said the national parties never spoke the language the people in Tamil Nadu understood and he tried to change this belief and found ‘reasonable success’ despite multiple roadblocks faced from both inside and outside (of the BJP).
Reacting to Annamalai’s resignation and reports of him launching a new party, Tamil Nadu BJP chief Nainar Nagendran on Friday dismissed concerns over the resignation and asserted that the party is an ideology-based organisation and therefore, the departure would have no impact on its electoral prospects in the state.
“I cannot comment on Annamalai’s resignation. The BJP is not a party that was formed recently. It is an ideology-based party, and there will certainly be no impact from this development. Anyone is free to start a political party. In a democracy, everyone has that right. Annamalai’s resignation from the BJP will not have any impact on the party. The allegation that importance is not being given to state-level rights is incorrect,” Nagendran was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.