BJP banking on five former CMs to swing ST reserved seats in Jharkhand

Today’s bye election in Jharkhand, when 43 of the 81 seats are having polling in the first phase, will witness key contests in the 20 ST reserved seats, most of which had been won by the JMM in 2019.

While the challenge for the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha is to retain the seats, a ‘resurgent’ BJP has gone all out to wrest as many reserved seats as possible this time, sanguine that the general seats in any case would fall into its lap.

The popular opinion on the streets is also that non-tribal voters will prefer the BJP and the tribals the JMM. On paper the BJP also seems to have all the heavyweights on its side, including five former chief ministers of the state.

Champai Soren is the latest ‘former’ chief minister to join the BJP in the state barely four months ago. Both Champai Soren, who warmed the chief minister’s chair for six months when Hemant Soren was in prison, and his son have been fielded by the BJP.

While they are backed by the resources of the BJP and the RSS, they have tough contests in hand, partly because many adivasis see him as a betrayer. BJP old-timers are also resentful of his late defection to the BJP. All his life he had opposed the BJP on behalf of the JMM and BJP sorkers had to contend with the ‘lion of Kolhan’ in every previous election.

If he and his son do win, it will be a huge loss of face for Hemant Soren and the JMM.

Another former chief minister Raghubar Das, the current Governor of Odisha, is not directly in the fray but the BJP has fielded his daughter-in-law Purnima Sahu from the Jamshedpur East seat. Das is the only chief minister of the state since 2000 to have completed the full term of five years. He was not a particularly popular chief minister though and is blamed for BJP’s loss in 2019. He himself had lost the election to an ‘independent’ candidate, a BJP rebel—Sarayu Roy, who had been denied ticket by the BJP. Roy this time is back to the NDA fold but is the JD(U) candidate from Jamshedpur West.

Das, however, is in the news partly because the Odisha Governor is camping in Jamshedpur for the past several weeks to oversee the daughter-in-law’s campaign. Objections submitted to the Election Commission that the holder of a Constitutional post should not be allowed to actively campaign in an election were ignored.

The Governor’s daughter-in-law, a greenhorn making her debut but who is educated and articulate, is in the fray possibly because of the adverse publicity around her husband, the Governor’s son. The son had allegedly beaten up an employee of the Raj Bhavan in Bhubaneswar because he was unhappy over a smaller car sent to receive him at the airport.

Clearly, he was ruled out as a candidate months after the controversy.

Wives of two more former chief ministers of the state, Arjun Munda and Madhu Koda, are also in the fray in the first phase. Koda was the state’s first ‘independent MLA’ to become the chief minister before joining the BJP. He is still being tried in corruption cases and had spent time in jail. The BJP, as usual, had campaigned fiercely against the ‘bhrast’ politician then. He however has a formidable support in his own constituency and BJP poached his wife Geeta Koda from the Congress and who is now in the contest as a BJP candidate.

The wife of yet another former chief minister Arjun Munda has also been fielded by the BJP. Arjun Munda was a union minister till he lost the Lok Sabha poll in June this year. Till the last moment it was expected that he would contest the election for the assembly.

However, he sprang a surprise by putting forward the name of his wife, Meera Munda, a housewife who has rarely ventured into the public sphere in the past, as the BJP candidate. Arjun munda is clearly biding his time and wants to wait and watch because another loss would have potentially ended his political career.

Finally, the BJP’s state president Babulal Marandi is also in the fray but polling in his constituency is scheduled for the second phase on 20 November.

Marandi, the first chief minister of the state, had quit the BJP in 2006 to float the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (JVM) which opposed the BJP and contested elections against it till 2019. Marandi himself was a harsh critic of BJP governments in the state until he decided to merge the JVM in the BJP and accepted the offer to become the state president.

Can these former chief ministers do the trick for the BJP and win the election? Results on 23 November will reveal. But the assembly election is already being described as a waveless election with little anger against the incumbent government and as little enthusiasm for the BJP.