Is the BJP trying to pick up the thread that Kamaraj lost? The legendary Congressman was the last non-Dravidian electoral icon in the state. Barring the very few in their late seventies, most Tamil voters wouldn’t remember him. After the debacle in the 1967 Assembly polls where he himself lost, the Tamil Nadu Congress hasn’t seen a matching vote catcher so far.

Since then, the state has been exercising its choice between the Dravidian parties or their alliances. Also every time, even in the heydays of Indira Gandhi, the campaign for even the Lok Sabha polls has been led by a regional satrap — C N Annadurai, M Karunanidhi, M G Ramachandran, J Jayalalithaa, and now M K Stalin. Would this pattern get disrupted?