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Old faces who may have “lost acceptance” and the failure of issues such as alleged infiltration to gain traction among Adivasis appear to have let down the BJP’s attempt to recapture power in Jharkhand on Saturday.
The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM)-led INDIA bloc won a comfortable majority in the 81-member Assembly, with the JMM bagging 34 constituencies, the Congress 16, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) four, and CPI-ML (L) two seats. The BJP won 21 constituencies.
According to BJP leaders, the Hemant Soren government’s Maiya Samman Yojana that provides Rs 1,000 to underprivileged women clicked in favour of the ruling alliance and a significant turnout of women voters indicated that. In the first phase, in which 43 seats went to polls, 69% of women turned out to vote.
A senior Jharkhand BJP leader said a detailed review of the party’s defeat would be conducted but prima facie it appeared that its tribal faces failed to draw the community’s votes. “The party is still presenting old faces such as Babu Lal Marandi and Arjun Munda who have lost acceptance among the masses. It appears that the public wants a change in leadership,” said the leader, questioning why Marandi, who is the state unit president, contested from a general seat, Dhanwar, instead of a tribal constituency. “If he was so popular among tribals, why did he choose to contest from a general category seat? He is leading too. Wouldn’t it have been better had he contested from an ST-reserved seat to send a message among tribal voters?”
The INDIA alliance swept the tribal-reserved seats, winning 27 of the 28 ST-reserved seats while the BJP ended up with only Seraikella, where its candidate was former CM and ex-Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader Champai Soren.
Of the 27 seats for the INDIA alliance, the JMM won 20 seats and the Congress seven. Five years ago, the JMM-led alliance won 25 of the 28 ST-reserved seats and the BJP won two. Among the seats that the JMM flipped are those two the BJP won: Torpa and Khunti.
Marandi is the state’s first CM and Munda, who lost the election from from Khunti earlier this year, is also a former CM. The BJP fielded Munda’s wife Meera from Potka (ST-reserved) who lost to the JMM’s Sanjib Sardar by 27,902 votes.
To bolster its Adivasi leadership, the BJP also inducted Champai Soren from the JMM and Hemant Soren’s sister-in-law Sita Soren. While Champai won, Sita Soren lost to the Congress’s Irfan Ansari by 43,676 votes in Jamtara, a non-reserved seat. “The party should now develop new leaders from the tribal community in Jharkhand,” said a BJP leader.
Another BJP leader said its campaign to unite tribals and non-tribals as “Hindus” with slogans of “batenge toh katenge (divided we fall)”, “ek hain to safe hain (together we are safe)”, “ghuspaithiye (infiltrators)”, “love jihad”, and “land jihad” failed to enthuse tribal voters. The BJP narrative around alleged infiltration in Adivasi areas and shrinking tribal population was shaped by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who was the Jharkhand election co-in-charge of the party.
“These slogans were to get votes of tribal voters in Santhal Pargana where Muslims are in a large number and they play a decisive role in elections. The trends show that tribal and OBC voters of Jharkhand are not concerned about these issues. Tribal are concerned more about their identity and OBCs are developing a progressive mindset. Notably, no tribal leader of the BJP or any other party too raised the issue of infiltration and love jihad in the past elections. That indicates that these issues mean nothing for Jharkhand people,” said a BJP leader.
The arrest of JMM leader and Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren in an alleged money laundering case may have also backfired for the BJP as Soren and his party projected it as the BJP’s attempt to go after an Adivasi CM, a son of the soil.
