SEREMBAN: Indian community votes will be a critical deciding factor in Barisan Nasional’s bid to wrest the Seremban Jaya seat, a constituency that has been a Pakatan Harapan stronghold for nearly two decades.

MIC deputy president Datuk Seri M. Saravanan said support from the Indian community for BN in Seremban Jaya had been encouraging so far.

However, he said it was too early to conclude that there had been a major shift in Indian support from PH to BN, similar to the trend seen during the recent Johor election.

“I see the Indian community giving its full support to the MIC candidate contesting under the BN banner. The response has been extraordinary this time, especially among young voters.

“Although this state seat was previously represented by a DAP assemblyman, many of those at our operations centre today are not even MIC members.

“They are ordinary people who have come forward to help MIC,” he said after visiting the BN operations centre in Seremban Jaya last night.

MIC has fielded Thinalan T. Rajagopalu, better known as Cikgu Thina, who will face Bersatu’s R. Mahendran and first-time PH candidate S. Mugunthan of DAP.

Seremban Jaya was previously known as the Senawang state seat before the 2018 electoral redelineation exercise.

The seat has been held by PH’s DAP for four consecutive terms since the 2008 general election.

Its former incumbent, Datuk P. Gunasekaran, retained the seat with comfortable and consistent majorities in every election.

Asked whether MIC could repeat its clean sweep of all the seats it contested in the Johor election, Saravanan said the political landscape and voters’ priorities in Johor and Negri Sembilan were different.

“The political landscape here is different from Johor. The state’s current needs are also very different, so we cannot make a direct comparison.

“But I can see that what happened in Johor has had an impact on Negri Sembilan,” he said.