He filed the papers before Coimbatore District Collector Kranthi Kumar Pati at the district collectorate.

Coimbatore South MLA and Mahila Morcha national president Vanathi Srinivasan was with him along with party leaders and cadre.

Annamalai, a former Karnataka cadre IPS officer, had resigned from the service and joined BJP in 2020. He was later made the state president of the party, and has been aggressively campaigning against the Stalin government.

He raised the issue of corruption and had brought out the ‘DMK Files’, highlighting the corruption and nepotism in the state's ruling party.

Annamalai conducted a six-month long ‘padayatra’ touching all the 234 Assembly constituencies of the state.

The yatra, ‘En Mann, En Makkal (My land, My people)' was flagged off by Union Home Minister Amit Shah. Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the closing ceremony of the Yatra. The BJP leader is engaged in a three-cornered fight in Coimbatore against Singai Ramachandran of the AIADMK and Ganapathi Rajkumar of the DMK.