Jharkhand to seal CM’s fate today; Priyanka set for Wayanad poll debut
Reputations will be at stake on Wednesday when 43 of Jharkhand’s 81 Assembly segments vote in the first phase, ahead of the final phase voting on November 20.
This phase will span key constituencies across 15 districts of the eastern state and will decide the fate of 683 candidates.
Editorial: Jharkhand battle
Apart from Jharkhand, Wednesday will witness byelections to the high-profile Wayanad Lok Sabha segment in Kerala (where Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is making her electoral debut) and 31 Assembly constituencies across 10 states —- seven in Rajasthan, six in West Bengal, five in Assam, four in Bihar, three in Karnataka, two in MP, and one each in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala and Meghalaya. Two Sikkim seats have already been won uncontested by candidates of the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM).
Phase-1 voting
683 candidates in fray during first phase in Jharkhand
43 of 81 Assembly seats to go to polls
15 districts to be covered
Jharkhand Assembly elections are being most keenly watched as yet another poll cycle kicks in. The reason — sheer scale of stakes on the table. In phase one, Jharkhand’s political stalwarts will be in the fray. Among key contestants from the INDIA bloc are Chief Minister Hemant Soren (Barhait), Hemant Soren’s wife Kalpana (Gandey), Rajya Sabha MP Mahua Majhi (Ranchi), AICC in charge for Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry Ajoy Kumar (Jamshedpur East, which the party has not won since 1985) and Jharkhand Health Minister Banna Gupta (Jamshedpur West).
On the NDA (BJP, JDU, AJSU, LJP) side, former Jharkhand CM and six-time MLA Champai Soren will contest from Saraikela, BJP Jharkhand chief Babulal Marandi will defend Dhanwar, and former CM Madhu Koda’s wife Geeta Koda is in the fray from Jagannathpur.
Broadly, Jharkhand polls will determine whether the Centre’s ruling BJP-led NDA bloc will continue its winning streak after recently bagging Haryana for a record third term or whether the ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha-Congress-RJD INDIA alliance will beat anti-incumbency to retain the key state.
As of today, the NDA has governments in 19 states and one UT and INDIA allies are in power in eight states and two UTs.
The Congress on its own has three states — Himachal Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka — and will need to do well in Jharkhand to blunt Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s latest attack that it is a “parjeevi (parasitic) party which is pulling allies down.”
Also on test on Wednesday will be PM Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah-led anti- immigrant and pro-UCC and NRC narrative in Jharkhand. The BJP, eyeing tribal vote, has promised a law to ensure tribal land is not usurped by illegal infiltrators and “every single infiltrator is deported”.
The issue of the alleged Bangladeshi infiltration causing demographic changes at the cost of Jharkhand’s tribals will weigh most heavily in the second phase of polling in the state on November 20. These will include 18 constituencies of tribal-dominated Santhal Pargana region’s Deoghar, Godda, Sahebganj, Pakur, Dumka and Jamtara districts. In 2019, the JMM had won nine of these 18 and the BJP just four. Overall, in 2019 Assembly elections, the JMM-led INDIA alliance had won 47 seats, whereas the BJP had plummeted from 37 in 2014 to 25.
Out of the 81 Assembly segments, 44 are general, 28 ST reserved and 9 SC reserved. The results will be out on November 23.
Key contestants
INDIA bloc: CM Hemant Soren (Barhait), CM’s wife Kalpana Soren (Gandey), Rajya Sabha MP Mahua Majhi (Ranchi), state Health Minister Banna Gupta (Jamshedpur West)
NDA: Former Jharkhand CM Champai Soren (Saraikela), BJP state chief Babulal Marandi (Dhanwar), former CM Madhu Koda’s wife Geeta Koda (Jagannathpur)
