Soren creates history with re-election in Jharkhand

The Hemant Soren-led Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and the I.N.D.I Alliance created history in Jharkhand by becoming the first party to be voted back to power in the tribal state.

- ABHINANDAN MISHRA

The bloc, which consisted of JMM, Congress, Rashtriya Janata Dal, and the Communist Party of India (ML), won 56 of the 81 Assembly seats that went to the polls. The JMM had contested 43 seats, Congress 30, RJD seven, while the CPI four seats, and they won 34, 16, four, and two seats, respectively.

The BJP's failure to repeat the electoral trend in the state, where voters typically remove the incumbent every election, came despite a highoctane campaign spearheaded by Union Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. The issue of illegal Muslim immigrants settling in Jharkhand and impacting demographic change was one of the BJP's biggest poll planks.

Clearly, as the results showed, the BJP's focus on raising emotive issues-what certain sections of the voters also saw as a "divisive" campaign rather than exclusively emphasizing the development it has brought by being in power at the Centre, and the further development it promised if voted into power in the state, could not overcome the work done by Soren in the last five years. The BJP was reduced to a poor 20 seats of the 68 it contested, five less than what it won in the last election. Its ally, the AJSU won one of the 10 seats it contested.

Soren's stature among the voters increased significantly after he was arrested by the Central agencies, kept in custody for five months, and then released on bail by the court.

The win for the JMM-led I.N.D.I.A bloc, even for BJP insiders, has not come as a surprise, as feedback from local agencies and state leadership before the elections were announced, had suggested that the BJP may struggle to gain power in Jharkhand's upcoming Assembly elections.