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Jharkhand is the only state slated to go to polls this year that the BJP can wrest from the Opposition and the rhetoric till now points it will be a bitterly contested election.
On Friday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who arrived in Ranchi the night before, will flag off the BJP’s “Parivartan Yatra” from Sahibganj district. First, Shah will travel to Bhognadih in Sahibganj that is the birthplace of Santhal rebellion leaders Sido and Kanhu around 12.30 pm. He will then address the Parivartan Sabha in Sahibganj’s Police Line Maidan at 1.30 pm. Shah will then travel all the way to Jharkhand Dham in Giridih, where he will address another public meeting around 3.45 pm to launch the yatra in the Dhanbad division.
In context: The biggest challenge that the BJP faces is winning back the Scheduled Tribe (ST) vote in the state. Coupled with the erosion in its Dalit vote base, the loss of Adivasi votes presents a major realpolitik and ideological problem for the BJP, which wants both these sections unified under the Hindutva fold.
In the recent Lok Sabha elections, the BJP and its ally AJSU, the All Jharkhand Students Union, won nine of the state’s 14 parliamentary seats. However, the five the alliance lost were all ST-reserved constituencies. More worryingly, the BJP-led alliance lost four of these parliamentary seats — Khunti, Lohardaga, Singhbhum and Rajamahal – by a big margin.
As Liz Mathew explained, in an attempt to wean away Adivasis from the JMM, the BJP’s strategy has been to target the Hemant Soren government over “illegal infiltration” and “tribal girls’ marriage with infiltrators” and attempt to make an impact in the Santhal Pargana division which has 18 of the state’s 28 ST-reserved Assembly seats. The party currently holds only four of them.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, keeping with the strategy, targeted the JMM-led government earlier this week at a rally in Jharkhand, alleging that Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltration poses a major threat to Jharkhand as it is “rapidly changing” the identity and demography of the Santhal Pargana and Kolhan regions. He accused the JMM government of encouraging infiltration for political interests. Expect more of a similar attack from Shah’s speeches in the afternoon.
The matter has also reached the courts, with the Jharkhand High Court last week ordering that a committee be set up to look into the issue of the declining population of tribal communities in Santhal Pargana.
CM Hemant Soren on Thursday warned the people of Jharkhand that “a flock of vultures” were coming to Jharkhand, hovering over the state “You will see leaders from Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh visiting village after village and panchayat after panchayat, spreading communal tension in the name of caste and religion,” the CM said, painting the BJP as a party of “outsiders”.
On September 9, Abhishek Angad was the first to report that the Jharkhand government complained to the Election Commission earlier this month about the BJP’s Jharkhand poll in-charges Himanta Biswa Sarma, the Assam CM, and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the Union Agriculture Minister. The Soren government alleged that the two had a “propensity to foment hatred across different communities” and threaten top bureaucrats of the state.
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Modi will be in Maharashtra on Friday, participating in the National “PM Vishwakarma” event in Wardha around 11.30 am to mark the first anniversary of the scheme’s launch. At the event, Modi is scheduled to release the certificates and loans to the scheme’s beneficiaries. He will also release a commemorative stamp to mark the occasion.
The PM will also lay the foundation of a textile park in Amravati, launch a skill development scheme of the Maharashtra government, and a startup scheme for women.
In a major relief for the Mamata Banerjee government, protesting doctors in Kolkata will end their sit-in outside the Health Department headquarters on Friday after marching to the CBI office. The doctors will rejoin work from Saturday, providing essential and emergency services, while continuing to boycott OPD services.
President Droupadi Murmu is in Ranchi to participate in the centenary celebrations of the ICAR-National Institute of Secondary Agriculture. The programme is scheduled to begin at 11.10 am.
