Jharkhand: How fiery Soren beat divisive tactics, stole BJP's thunder

The BJP-led Mahayuti’s stunning return to power in Maharashtra may have overshadowed Saturday’s (November 23) poll outcome in Jharkhand but the INDIA bloc’s decisive win in the tribal-dominated state is a triumph that can’t be dismissed as a mere consolation prize.

Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren and his legislator wife Kalpana Soren’s spirited campaign that propelled not just their Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) but also allies, the Congress, RJD and the CPI-ML, to victory in the state is one that has defied many odds.

Hurdles for Hemant

Over the past five years, the BJP and its government at the Centre created numerous hurdles in Hemant Soren’s efforts to run his government and deliver on his alliance’s poll promises. The Centre delayed devolution of Jharkhand’s share in both GST dues and budgetary allocations, preventing the state government from rolling out or fully implementing various populist schemes. Successive governors of the state sat on crucial decisions taken by the state government. Regular attempts by the BJP to destabilise the government by engineering defections had been at play too.

Hemant himself went to jail on charges of alleged money laundering in January, quitting the CM’s chair in favour of then trusted party veteran and Seraikella MLA Champai Soren. He remained incarcerated throughout the Lok Sabha poll campaign earlier this year and, shortly upon returning as CM following bail by the high court that slammed the probe agencies for a political witch-hunt, Hemant was in for another setback – the defection of Champai to the BJP.

Also Watch: JMM sweeps tribal strongholds in Jharkhand despite BJP’s strong campaign

And then came the BJP’s assembly poll campaign, arguably, the most communally divisive that Jharkhand has seen since its creation in 2000. The saffron party’s rhetoric over illegal Bangladeshi migrants storming Jharkhand and changing the demography of the state’s tribal-dominated division of Santhal Pargana was designed to exploit communal faultlines and break the JMM’s hold over the state’s over 26 per cent Adivasi population that has 28 assembly seats reserved for it. The JMM-led coalition had won 26 of these 28 seats in 2019.

BJP's fear mongering

The fear-mongering, spearheaded by none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was meant to consolidate the BJP’s hold over non-Adivasi Hindus – upper castes, backward castes, and Dalits alike – against the ‘Muslim-appeasing’ INDIA bloc. An absolutely repulsive video advertisement, demonising Muslims and their ‘political patrons’ in the INDIA bloc, was used by the BJP in the final lap of the poll campaign with the Election Commission turning a Nelson’s Eye.

And yet, on Saturday (November 23), as the early leads solidified into final results, the Jharkhand voter stood firmly behind the JMM-led alliance, giving it an even greater victory than the one that brought Hemant Soren to the CM’s chair in 2019.

Also Read: Jharkhand polls: INDIA beats anti-incumbency, ‘infiltrator’ campaign to stun NDA

Hemant repeats feat

The 56-seat win of the INDIA bloc (JMM – 34, Congress – 16, RJD – 4, and CPI-ML – 2) against the BJP’s tally of 21 seats (NDA allies JD-U, LJP-RV, and AJSU could pick up just one seat each) spans way beyond the tribal-dominated assembly segments of the state. It also places Hemant in somewhat the same league as Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, CPM stalwart Pinarayi Vijayan, and AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal, who have the distinction of being the only ‘Opposition’ CMs to have returned their respective parties to power for a consecutive term since Modi began rolling the BJP’s victory juggernaut in 2014.

Of course, the implications of the Maharashtra outcome, where the INDIA bloc, known in the state as the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), suffered an unexpectedly debilitating blow with its constituents, the Congress, Sharad Pawar’s NCP-SP, and Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena-UBT failing to even collectively cross the 50-seat mark, on the political narrative nationally would be far greater than that of the Jharkhand results.

However, the Jharkhand outcome gives much to the JMM, the Congress (though the party’s 16-seat victory must actually be credited to Hemant’s account) and secularists of various political persuasions across the country to cheer about.

Also Read: Hemant-Kalpana: The power couple driving JMM’s success in Jharkhand

Rejection of communalism

The Saturday results are an unqualified rejection of the BJP’s communal campaign in Jharkhand. That all strident efforts by the saffron party to split the tribal vote by villainising the Muslims – the PM had famously remarked during the campaign that the ‘infiltrators’ would elope with the daughters of tribals and claim tribal land if the JMM and INDIA bloc return to power – failed spectacularly is evident from the results across the SC-reserved seats.

The INDIA bloc swept both the Kolhan and Santhal Pargana divisions, which account for 14 and 178 assembly segments, respectively, winning 11 seats in Kolhan and 17 seats in Santhal Pargana. Though Champai managed to win his Seraikella seat for the BJP, his son, Babulal Soren, crashed out in the Ghatsila contest to JMM’s Ramdas Soren by a substantial margin of over 22000 votes. In the Santhal Pargana division, the epicentre of the BJP’s infiltrator rhetoric, the BJP could win only the general seat of Jarmundi in Dumka district.

BJP's dynastic politics

The BJP, which eschews dynasty politics in its public discourse but practises it to the hilt in electoral battles, had fielded kin of several of its leaders, including four former CMs of the state, arguably, in the hope that such stalwarts would help bring incremental seats and with the intent of signalling a determined fight. The results, however, were a mixed bag for the party on this score and showed that the BJP’s share of dynasts did little to boost their party’s victory prospects.

While Champai won, his son Babulal lost. Odisha Governor and former Jharkhand CM Raghubar Das may have managed to have his daughter-in-law, Purnima Das Sahu, elected from Jamshedpur East but former CMs Madhu Koda and Arjun Munda failed to get their respective wives, Geeta Koda and Meera Munda, elected from Jagannathpur and Potka, respectively. Even Hemant Soren’s estranged sister-in-law and former JMM MLA Sita Soren-Murmu, who defected to the BJP earlier this year, lost the polls in Jamtara to the Congress’s Irfan Ansari by a massive margin of nearly 44,000 votes.

Also Watch: BJP triumphs in Maharashtra; Jharkhand shows INDIA bloc's strength

Disillusion and anger

The extent of people’s disillusion and anger with the BJP could be gauged best with how the party fared in its stronghold of Godda; the pocket borough of its hate-spewing MP Nishikant Dubey. The saffron party lost all three assembly segments in the Godda district with incumbent Congress MLAs Pradeep Yadav and Dipika Pandey Singh comfortably retaining their Poreyahat and Mahagama seats, respectively, and the BJP’s incumbent Godda MLA Amit Mandal losing the seat to the RJD’s Sanjay Yadav.

The BJP suffered reversals in its stronghold of Bokaro too with its prominent leaders and incumbent MLAs Biranchi Narayan and Amar Kumar Bauri losing their Bokaro and Chandankiyari seats to the Congress and the JMM, respectively. Bauri, in fact, finished a distant third in Chandankiyari, his poll pitch further queered by the presence of Arjun Rajwar, candidate of the fledgling Jharkhand Loktantrik Krantikari Morcha (JLKM), who finished second behind JMM’s Umakant Rajak.

The JLKM, founded by promising youth and backward caste leader ‘Tiger’ Jairam Mahato earlier this year, may have won just a lone seat (Jairam Mahato in Dumri) but it managed to quietly but substantially split the BJP’s Mahato votes in seats spread across the North Chotanagpur division while the BJP was busy trying to divide the JMM’s tribal vote through its polarisation tactics.

Moving forward, the JLKM may emerge as a major force in Jharkhand; something that must worry the BJP. The INDIA bloc would, perhaps, do well to start making overtures to the JLKM founder starting now if it wants to further consolidate its hold over Jharkhand.

Also Watch: JMM sweeps tribal strongholds in Jharkhand despite BJP’s strong campaign

Hemant and Kalpana steal the limelight

While the JLKM’s future is something that the BJP and the JMM would both be observing closely, the present clearly belongs to Hemant and Kalpana Soren who have been re-elected MLAs from Barhait and Gandey, respectively. It was the Soren couple that led the charge for the INDIA bloc in Jharkhand and even shouldered the burden of a lethargic Congress, campaigning vociferously for the Grand Old Party’s candidates while Rahul Gandhi, mysteriously, chose to play only a guest role in the campaign.

The Congress may now want to brandish the Jharkhand win as its own to deflect the brickbats that will come over its appalling show in Maharashtra and similar recent debacles in Haryana and Jammu but credit for the Jharkhand win truly belongs to Hemant Soren, Kalpana Soren, the JMM and, most importantly, the people of Jharkhand, who robustly rejected the BJP’s divisive and hateful campaign. It is also a story of the Sorens’ perseverance in the face of seemingly insurmountable adversities; something the Congress must learn from at least now.