Jharkhand elections: how rebels-turned-independent could play spoilsport in some key seats | India News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: Raghubar Dasgovernor of Odisha and former chief minister of Jharkhand, is neither contesting the 2024 assembly elections nor part of the election campaign, but when the state’s voters cast their votes tomorrow, he will keep his fingers crossed.
Raghubar’s daughter-in-law Purnima Das Sahu is the BJP candidate from Jamshedpur East assembly seat against Congress’ Ajoy Kumar. Despite the high-profile candidature, her path to the state assembly has been hampered by the presence of BJP rebel Shiv Shankar Singh, who has resigned from the party’s primary membership and accused the saffron party of promoting dynasty politics. Independent.
Singh, 55, who comes from an RSS background, strongly opposed the BJP’s decision to take on Purnima from Jamshedpur East. He also pointed out several family members of influential figures who had been given tickets in the state, such as Meera Munda (wife of former Union minister and former Jharkhand CM Arjun Munda) from Potka and Babulal Soren (son of ex-CM Champai Soren) from Ghatsila.
“How can the BJP criticize ‘Pariwarvad’ when they themselves practice it?” Singh asked, adding that the party had no right to speak against it.
Like Jamshedpur East, several other seats of the state may also see a three-way battle with parties failing to convince the rebels to withdraw from the race. As the parties prepare to battle for ballots, they are wary of rebels who have become independent and will affect the prospects of their official candidates.
The state BJP has expelled 30 leaders from the party for contesting as independent candidates against party nominees in various Assembly seats. While not all of them may be in a position to influence the outcome, they could damage the prospects of official candidates in closely contested seats. The saffron party has already lost several leaders in the run-up to the elections, with many of them denied tickets to quit the party.
The ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morch (JMM) is also facing the rebel problem, but not to the extent of the BJP. Several YMM The leaders have also become rebels and pose a challenge to the official candidates.
Meanwhile, the Congress, which suffered a shocking defeat in the Assembly elections in Haryana by ignoring the threat from the Independents, faces relatively less pressure on this front as it is the youngest partner in the ruling coalition.
AICC Jharkhand in-charge Ghulam Ahmad Mir interestingly admitted to the Haryana fiasco as he claimed that there was no factionalism in the state unit like in Haryana and all decisions in the run-up to the elections were taken by consensus among senior leaders.
The Congress general secretary also alleged that there was “pro-incumbency” in favor of Jharkhand’s INDIA block government, which was making progress under the leadership of Hemant Soren, while the BJP had “headless votes” and no one expected to win the state to lead.
(With input from the agency)