From catching thieves to indulging in a political slugfest, transition has been smooth for the 2011-batch IPS officer of Tamil Nadu cadre Kuppuswamy Annamalai. Hailed as “Singham IPS” following his effective handling of riots in Chikmanglur district, K. Annamalai resigned from the service in May 2019 and joined the BJP next year.
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He was appointed president of the Tamil Nadu BJP a year later, at a fairly young age of 37, the youngest person to become BJP chief of a state. Though he lost the Assembly election himself in 2021, he ensured the BJP won four Assembly seats—its highest tally since 2001, when the BJP contested in alliance with the DMK. He is in fray again during the ongoing elections in the Coimbatore parliamentary constituency.
The son of a farmer, Annamalai, is a native of Karur in Tamil Nadu and belongs to the backward Gounder Community. He is an engineer by qualification, having graduated in mechanical engineering from PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, and then acquired an MBA degree from the prestigious IIM Lucknow.
His two-year stay at Lucknow changed his life forever. “I come from a conservative, well-ordered state,” he said in an interview. “UP was a culture shock. There, people will commit murder for Rs 5. What I saw there changed me. I had never seen such stark poverty or even imagined that life could be this way. Money stopped being a priority then. I wanted a life where I could make a positive change in people’s lives. The civil service seemed the way to do that.” And that is why he chucked high-paying corporate jobs in favour of Khaki uniforms.
After clearing UPSC CSE, Annamalai joined the police service in 2011 and won the Gold Medal for his leadership skills at the conclusion of a four-month-long foundation course at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy for Administration (LBSNAA), Mussoorie. He followed it up with another stellar performance at Sardar Vallabh Bhai National Police Adacemy, Hyderabad. During his training as an IPS officer from December 2011 to September 2013, he was adjudged the second-best officer trainee in the 64th RR batch.
In September 2014, he was drafted into the Karnataka Police, with his first posting being in Karkala as Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP). Here, he spearheaded an awareness campaign against drug abuse and the sale of tobacco, shutting down several illegal liquor shops.
Between January 2015 and August 2016, he was posted as superintendent of police (SP) in Udupi district. It was during this stint that he investigated his first murder case, involving a 17-year-old girl who was also raped by her assailants. He fulfilled the promise made to the victim’s mother to arrest the culprits within two days. He didn’t stop at that. He also instituted a scholarship of Rs 10,000 in the name of the victim to ensure that she continued to live in people’s memories.
Besides this, he has also been vocal about the radicalization of Islam, especially in Bhatkal, a neighbourhood district of Udupi that has become a hotbed of Islam radicalization, with Indian Mujahideen being most active in the area. Annamalai studied Islamic scriptures like the Quran and Hadith and went into deep religious philosophy, which, according to him, helped him understand the psyche of terrorists and organisations.
Following this, he also served as the police superintendent of Chikkamagaluru and Mangalore districts. Known for his tough stance on communalism, Annamalai has dealt with riots in Baba Boodangiri and taken on ISIS in Kundapura. In Baba Boodangiri, he organised a peace committee meeting in 2017 with leaders from all sides, soon after a spate of riots hit the already-troubled area. Communal tensions arose when a group of miscreants vandalised the Dattatreya Baba Boodan Swamy Dargah, a site of long-standing dispute between Hindus and Muslims. “That’s when I explained to them that this vandalism is the work of a few fringe elements. It’s not up to the police to provide 24-hour security, as the Muslim community has demanded,” he said in the interview.
He earned the reputation of being a hard-as-nails cop with an unconventional approach. One FIR leads to another, and the dispute always remains unresolved. He claims he always wanted people to resolve their disputes among themselves. He has also served as the Deputy Police Commissioner in Bengaluru (South). That was his last posting. He resigned from the IPS thereafter.
Annamalai started off his political journey as vice president for the Tamil Nadu BJP and was soon promoted to state president. Annamalai resorted to aggressive politics. He has been known to work at the ground level for the BJP, as it was Annamalai who helped bring the BJP into mainstream state politics for Tamil Nadu. The BJP today in Tamil Nadu is the third largest party, after DMK and AIDMK. This surge can largely be attributed to Annamalai being the president. A large section of the youth is fond of him because he is educated and young. In the last year, he has done well and had an opportunity because the AIADMK party was divided and remained invisible during the first six months after the elections, and Annamalai took the opportunity to project the BJP as the principal opposition party to the ruling DMK.”
In the manner in which K. Annamalai was invited by the Centre of the BJP, it is quite clear that he has been able to leave an impact on the high-level leadership of the party, making him the main focus of attention for the BJP, especially in Tamil Nadu. The higher leadership of the BJP is also said to be impressed by his dynamic nature, his policy, and his nature of work, which makes him even more popular among the youth of Tamil Nadu.
His aggressive campaign strategy is also very popular and noticeworthy. For example, on July 28, 2023, Tamil Nadu BJP president K. Annamalai started his ‘En Mann En Makkal’ (My Land, My People) road show from the temple town of Rameswaram. It was flagged off by Union Home Minister Amit Shah. He also covered over 234 Assembly segments, covering all 39 parliamentary constituencies of the state, making him the first campaigner for the BJP.
Annamalai has, over the years, earned the reputation of a staunch Hindu leader. The manner in which he gave a public riposte to Udayanidhi Stalin, son of Chief Minister MK Stalin, on Sanatan culture has endeared him to a large swathe of people in Tamil Nadu. He is working overtime to expand the BJP’s support base in the southern state. “DMK and AIADMK, between them, cornered 60 percent of the votes polled. My target is to gain the maximum of the remaining 40 percent of voters,” he said recently.
He is on target for Islamic fundamentalists. That is why the centre has upgraded his security from Y to Z. He is guarded by 64 armed guards around the clock. These are risky undertakings, whether it is battling ISIS or dealing with communal strife in Chikkamagaluru, where he ran into an angry stone-pelting mob. “I have a son who is dependent on me; of course, it’s frightening. But it’s like what Paulo Coelho said: The universe is conspiring to give you what you want. I do believe that if you have the right intentions, then you will be safe,” he says.
Having an engineering and management background besides eight years’ experience of combating crime and fundamentalism as an IPS comes in handy to him in connecting with people and expanding the BJP’s support base in an otherwise ‘forbidden territory’. Obviously, it is not for nothing that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has such high regard for him that he was the only state BJP president to have been invited to a farewell dinner hosted by him for the outgoing President of India, Ram Nath Kovind. The only other person to have been invited from Tamil Nadu was the then chief minister, Edapaddi Palanisami.
