Meet K Annamalai; The Supercop Who Is Trying To Make BJP Visible in Tamil Nadu (Image: twitter.com/KAnnamalai)
K Annamalai, the youngest Tamil Nadu BJP president ever, is a former 2011 batch IPS officer of the Karnataka cadre. He served as the police superintendent in Chikkamagaluru and Udupi districts and as deputy police commissioner in Bengaluru (south), before quitting the service in September 2019. Mr Annamalai was appointed as the president of BJP Tamil Nadu state unit in 2020.
Annamalai Kuppuswamy hails from an agricultural family belonging to the influential Gounder community of the Karur district in the Kongu region of Tamil Nadu. Kongu region, the western part of the state, is a major BJP vote bank.
He completed graduation in engineering from a Coimbatore-based college and secured an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Lucknow.
Annamalai joined the police service in 2011, and his first posting took him to Karkala in Karnataka as assistant superintendent of police. There he initiated and headed awareness campaigns against drug abuse, sale of tobacco, and shut down several illegal liquor shops.
He served as superintendent of police (SP) in Udupi district between January 2015 and August 2016, and investigated the first murder case of his career, in which a 17-year-old student who was also raped by her assailants was involved. The alleged culprits, a duo aged 19, were arrested within two days, and Annamalai instituted a Rs 10,000 scholarship in the victim’s name, given annually to the girl who tops Class 10 in the Byndoor administrative district.
He studied the Quran and Hadith with the help of the religious scholars to understand the psyche behind terror organisations like the Indian Mujahideen, SIMI and ISIS. The next transfer took him to Chikkamgaluru until October 2018, and was serving as the deputy commissioner of police, Bengaluru South, when he decided to quit in 2019.
During his police career, Annamalai earned a name “Singham Anna” on account of his policing style. ‘Singham’, which means lion, seeks to draw a parallel between him and the supercop portrayed by Tamil actor Suriya in his Singham movie series.
Annamalai joined BJP in 2020, an year prior to the state assembly elections held in the summer of 2021 – the first election since the death of political stalwarts Jayalalithaa of the AIADMK and M. Karunanidhi of the DMK.
He became the youngest president of Tamil Nadu BJP ever, within a year of joining the party, by replacing L Murugan, the current Union minister of State in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry.
Annamalai, backed by then BJP ally All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) also competed in Aravakurichi constituency in his home district but lost by a margin of 24,816 votes with DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) nominee R Elango.
His aggression ensured and earned BJP a visibility in the DMK dominated Tamil Nadu. “PM Narendra Modi has risen from humble beginnings and I am inspired by his life. The BJP is the only party that inspires me”, he said after joining BJP in 2020.
“I am a big fan of Modiji, He shows me that a common man can aspire to reach the top and achieve the goal, and he does not need to come from any dynasty”, added Anamalai.
