It has been almost a month since the BJP’s candidate for Coimbatore South, Vanathi Srinivasan, hit the ground campaigning. She has covered quite a bit of ground already.
Everywhere she goes, people recognise and welcome her. “My presence in television studios has taken me to voters’ drawing rooms. That’s a big plus — people recognise me. The first barrier is broken. The other plus is that the party symbol, the lotus, too is well known,” she says.
Such recognition has strengthened her bonding with voters and helped her throw off the outsider tag, the BJP leader says. “I am as much a Coimbatore person as anybody else.”
The criticism that she moved to Coimbatore — she fought the last Assembly election from Mylapore in Chennai — because in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls the party received more votes than the AIADMK in the South Assembly segment does not hold water, she contends.
Ms. Vanathi talks of her roots in the city, saying that she went to a government school near Thondamuthur and attended college at the PSG College of Arts and Science.
Even now, the BJP leader says, she continues to maintain close ties with these places that were an important part of her formative years.
Emphasising her political experience, she says that she has led protests in Coimbatore, interacted with industry leaders and facilitated meetings with BJP ministers in the Centre to solve the latter’s grievances.
In this election, she has three important promises for voters establishing a skill development centre for youth so that they can find employment in industries in and around the district; empowering women so that they too have access to economic opportunities, and closing down liquor shops.
She dismisses the charge that her party had been soft in its criticism of the Jayalalithaa government, adding that the government’s harshest criticism in the recent times had come from Union Minister Piyush Goyal.
Everywhere she goes, people recognise and welcome her. “My presence in television studios has taken me to voters’ drawing rooms. That’s a big plus — people recognise me. The first barrier is broken. The other plus is that the party symbol, the lotus, too is well known,” she says.
Such recognition has strengthened her bonding with voters and helped her throw off the outsider tag, the BJP leader says. “I am as much a Coimbatore person as anybody else.”
The criticism that she moved to Coimbatore — she fought the last Assembly election from Mylapore in Chennai — because in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls the party received more votes than the AIADMK in the South Assembly segment does not hold water, she contends.
Ms. Vanathi talks of her roots in the city, saying that she went to a government school near Thondamuthur and attended college at the PSG College of Arts and Science.
Even now, the BJP leader says, she continues to maintain close ties with these places that were an important part of her formative years.
Emphasising her political experience, she says that she has led protests in Coimbatore, interacted with industry leaders and facilitated meetings with BJP ministers in the Centre to solve the latter’s grievances.
In this election, she has three important promises for voters establishing a skill development centre for youth so that they can find employment in industries in and around the district; empowering women so that they too have access to economic opportunities, and closing down liquor shops.
She dismisses the charge that her party had been soft in its criticism of the Jayalalithaa government, adding that the government’s harshest criticism in the recent times had come from Union Minister Piyush Goyal.