Annamalai’s 'Gujarat company' remark about Centre resonates with Keralam’s ruling front and Opposition over north-south disparities

Former BJP Tamil Nadu State president K. Annamalai recently criticized the Central government, alleging that it had transformed into a "Gujarati company." This statement has resonated with both the ruling front and the Opposition in Kerala on Thursday, August 20, 2026. Annamalai accused the BJP's national leadership of adopting a "Gujarat pivot," which he claimed displayed systemic apathy towards non-BJP-ruled South Indian States.

He argued that the Central government was abandoning the principles of symmetric federalism by directing substantial industrial, infrastructure, and fiscal resources, as well as major events, to Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.

Kerala Communist Party (Marxist) Central committee member and former Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Isaac told The Hindu that the widening disparity in economic development between states was causing distress even among Modi sympathizers. He contended that market forces were not solely responsible for the lopsided development pattern and that the Modi government had exacerbated economic inequality by concentrating infrastructure spending and industrial projects in BJP-ruled States.

Former Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president Mullappally Ramachandran and Sandeep Varier, a Congress legislator from Thrikkaripur who quit the BJP in 2025, both praised Annamalai for "belatedly recognizing the home truths" about the Modi government. Ramachandran emphasized that Modi's policies have exacerbated regional disparities, with human development indices, health indices, and literacy rates in southern states far surpassing those in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, which have seen development benefits primarily directed towards corporates.

In a Facebook post, Varier argued that BJP's discrimination against South India was both organizational and linguistic, noting that no South Indian leader had been included in the BJP's national leadership or that the party was promoting Hindi as a subtle linguistic imposition. BJP State general secretary S. Suresh countered that Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh had become magnets for international investment due to reduced bureaucracy and becoming business-friendly, not because of Modi's leadership.

Suresh defended the BJP's "double-engine government" model, asserting that BJP-ruled States had benefited from aligning State and Central government development priorities.