Jharkhand: Defeat in all Lok Sabha seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes could hurt BJP in Assembly elections

Six months before the Assembly election is to be held in Jharkhand, the loss of all five Lok Sabha seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes does not augur well for the BJP, which was trounced in the 2019 Assembly election when it was led by a non-tribal Chief Minister.

Of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in Jharkhand, the BJP could win only 8, including the reserved (Scheduled Caste) seat of Palamu. Its ally, the All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU), won Giridih, a non-reserved seat, in a triangular contest.

The BJP’s performance will be interpreted as a backlash against the arrest of former Chief Minister Hemant Soren, executive president of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), in a corruption case. This is in contrast to the BJP’s performance in tribal-dominated Chhattisgarh, where it won 10 of the 11 Lok Sabha seats months after it won the Assembly election and made a tribal representative the Chief Minister.

Among the losing BJP candidates were Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda in Khunti; Sita Soren, daughter-in-law of Shibu Soren in the family bastion, Dumka; and Geeta Koda, who defected from the Congress, in Singhbhum. The BJP is looking at Sita and Geeta as long-term prospects for the party in Santhal Pargana, which is dominated by the Santhals, the tribal community Sita belongs to, and the Singhbhum region, which is dominated by the Ho tribe to which Geeta belongs.

Also Read | Jharkhand: A battle over tribal identities

After the Hemant Soren-led JMM-Congress alliance came to power in 2019, the BJP carried out a course correction by bringing in Babulal Marandi, the State’s first Chief Minister and a Santhal, as the party’s State president. But, clearly, even he was not able to quell the opposition campaign that painted the BJP as “anti-tribal” because it sent a tribal Chief Minister to jail.

The JMM won three seats—Rajmahal, Dumka, and Singhbhum—with the campaign handled by Soren’s wife, Kalpana Soren. In fact, the results played out as Frontline had reported (see “A battle of tribal identities”, June 14): that the contest would be intense in Dumka, Singhbhum, Khunti, Lohardaga, and Rajmahal, all tribal seats, while the BJP would have an edge in the other nine seats.

JMM leader Kalpana Soren hugs her mother-in-law, Rupi Soren, after winning the Gandey Assembly byelection, in Giridih district, on June 4.  | Photo Credit: PTI

With identity politics taking centre stage after Hemant Soren’s arrest and the renewed call for “Sarna” dharma (the religion rooted in nature worship followed by the tribal people of the Chhotanagpur region), the BJP faced protests at many places during the campaign.

The people’s anger was reflected in the results. Arjun Munda lost in Khunti to the Congress’ Kalicharan Munda by 1.5 lakh votes, a seat he won by just 1,445 votes in 2019. Putting on a brave face, Arjun Munda downplayed the BJP’s loss in all five tribal seats saying: “There is no mistake as such. The people of Khunti elected me last time. This time they decided otherwise, and I accept the people’s mandate.” The BJP also lost Lohardaga, which too it won in 2019. In terms of vote share, the BJP’s declined by 7 per cent, while the JMM and the Congress recorded a rise of nearly 4 per cent each.

The victory margins of the JMM in Singhbhum, Lohardaga, and Rajmahal are between 1.3 and 1.7 lakh. Only in Dumka, is it less than 23,000 owing to the confusion among JMM supporters about choosing between party and parivar. The party candidate, Nalin Soren, eventually won by about 22,500 votes against “badi bahu” Sita (wife of Shibu Soren’s elder son, the late Durga Soren) of the BJP.

The BJP candidate Dhullu Mahto being greeted by supporters after he won from the Dhanbad constituency, on June 5.  | Photo Credit: Chandan Paul/ANI

After Hemant Soren’s arrest in January this year, there were competing claims within the family for the chief ministership and Sita was against Hemant’s wife, Kalpana, getting the post. Champai Soren became the Chief Minister as a compromise candidate. Later, Sita joined the BJP and released a letter slamming the Hemant Soren group and alleging that she was ill-treated within the party.

The story of Sita Soren’s loss has two plots: the JMM candidate in Dumka, Nalin Soren, being a member of the old guard who had worked with Shibu Soren and the BJP dropping sitting MP Sunil Soren in Sita’s favour. Aware that a section of the party was sulking at Sunil being dropped, the BJP’s top leadership promised a future role for Sunil. But it did not work.

The loss will rankle the BJP not only because Sita Soren was a high-profile candidate who was inducted into the party with much fanfare but also because Dumka is a seat that Babulal Marandi won twice. A BJP win in Dumka would have signalled the weakening hold of the Soren family not only on that seat but on the politics of the Santhal Pargana division. Dumka saw a very polarised campaign, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying that “love jehad” had started in Jharkhand. He also said that “our tribal daughters are being targeted by infiltrators” and claimed that “the INDI Alliance wants to give reservation to Muslims based on religion”.

In Singhbhum, the BJP had inducted Geeta Koda, the Congress’ sitting MP and wife of former Jharkand Chief Minister Madhu Koda, to make gains in the Kolhan region. Geeta defeated the BJP veteran Laxman Gilua in 2019. The fact that the JMM and the Congress won all six Assembly segments of the Singhbhum seat in the 2019 Assembly election seemed to have worked to the advantage of the JMM candiate, Joba Majhi. Besides, the sympathy wave for Hemant united people of different groups.

In Lohardaga, former Jharkhand Congress president Sukhdeo Bhagat won, defeating the BJP’s Sameer Oraon.

The BJP’s Nishikant Dubey celebrating his victory in Godda constituency on June 5.   | Photo Credit: Sanjib Dutta/ANI

Against the BJP-AJSU alliance, the opposition put up a four-party alliance of the Congress, the JMM, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), and the CPI(ML). The Congress contested seven seats, the JMM five, the RJD one, and the CPI(ML) one. Of these, the JMM won three and the Congress two. That the Congress could not open its account in urban seats like Dhanbad, which has a sizeable Muslim population, and Ranchi, where Subodh Kant Sahay’s daughter, Yashaswini Sahay, contested, tells the story of its depleting organisational base.

In Dhanbad, the Congress’ Anupama Singh, daughter of the late Rajendra Singh, who was the national president of the Indian National Trade Union Congress, lost by 3.3 lakh votes to the BJP’s Dulu Mahato despite a massive tussle within the party against his candidature from this Kurmi-dominated seat.

In Godda, the controversial BJP MP Nishikant Dubey secured his fourth win. He was instrumental in the disqualification of Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra in the outgoing 17th Lok Sabha. Since Moitra also won her seat in West Bengal, one can expect some fireworks in Parliament in the coming session.

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In the Maoist-dominated Palamu, the only SC-reserved constituency in the State, former Jharkhand DGP Vishnu Dayal Ram of the BJP won for the third consecutive term. In Koderma (North Chotanagpur), Union Minister Annapurna Devi retained her seat, defeating the CPI(ML)’s Vinod Singh. The BJP also won Hazaribagh, where it denied the ticket to its two-term MP Jayant Sinha, son of former Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha. Instead, Manish Jaiswal won by a margin of 2.76 lakh votes.

The JMM-led alliance, which has 47 of the 81 Assembly seats in the State, is hoping its increased tally in the Lok Sabha election will help it repeat its performance in the Assembly election to be held later this year. Hemant Soren’s arrest has united tribal groups—Santhal, Oraon, Munda, Khariya, Ho, and Paharia—in support of the JMM, which could spell trouble for the BJP in the Assembly election where urban votes may not be able to alter results in a large number of rural constituencies.

The Jharkhandi Bhasha Khatiyan Sangharsh Samiti (JBKSS), led by Jairam Mahto, a young Kurmi leader, did not win a Lok Sabha seat but got a good number of votes across seats, including Giridih, where Jairam Mahto secured nearly 3.5 lakh votes and made the contest triangular. The other seats where the JBKSS performed well are Dhanbad (80,000 odd votes), Hazaribagh (1.57 lakh votes), and Ranchi (1.3 lakh votes). After the JMM and the AJSU, the JBKSS is emerging from the grassroots and could be a key player in government formation after the Assembly election.