By Kushal Jeena
The upcoming assembly elections in Jharkhand is all set to be a challenge for the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party that is struggling to retain the state, as it has suffered four back-to-back electoral setbacks in the elections held last year.
The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP that boasted of having 16 chief ministers in its kitty in November last year has already lost three major states and is losing another key state of Maharashtra. The electoral drubbings in four states assume significance as they happened on both sides of general elections held earlier this year in which Prime Minister Modi pulled off a spectacular victory for his party.
The challenge in Jharkhand appears tough for BJP in view of the assembly election results in Maharashtra and Haryana, and subsequent trouble it faced with allies. The dismal performance and bitter experience with its allies in Maharashtra and Haryana is weighing heavily in the minds of party leadership.
The BJP has not yet finalized a seat-sharing arrangement with its existing ally — the All Jharkhand Students Union in Jharkhand. Besides LJP, another of its ally too has now decided to quit the alliance and contest the assembly elections on its own.
However, the opposition grouping consisting of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, the Congress and the RJD – have already sealed a seat-sharing formula after returning from the verge of collapse. Hence, the Opposition alliance looks formidable in Jharkhand. The recent happenings in the state BJP in the run-up to the Jharkhand assembly elections, have not only come up as serious problems for BJP but also the switching of sides by its chief whip Radhakrishna Kishore and other leaders to AJSU have further complicated the matters. In fact, state elections have emerged as a new headache for the BJP.
Like other states where elections were held in the recent party, the BJP has struggled for Prime Minister Modi not being a direct factor and local issues becoming important. The triple loss in the Hindi heartland states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh was evidennce of the popular mood that the people wanted a change. The outcome of recent elections in Maharashtra and Haryana reaffirm the general perception that the BJP is on a sticky ground in states where PM Modi’s personal appeal is not a key factor and Jharkhand that goes to polls in five phases from November 30 onwards, is one among them. The BJP-AJSU alliance has split as BJP did not clear its position on seat-sharing.
The BJP scraped through in Haryana by piggybacking on Jannayak Janata Party of Dushyant Chautala, who played a vital role in government formation in the aftermath of poll results. The BJP’s claim of providing good governance for five years failed to find enough support on the ground and the party ultimately fell short of majority.
The Narendra Modi and Amit Shah led BJP leadership easily walked into a trap that NCP strongman Sharad Pawar laid for them. They also underestimated the strength of Shiv Sena supremo Uddhav Thackeray. The BJP contested Maharashtra election in alliance with the Shiv Sena, which changed track after election results, left BJP short of majority, though the coalition got a clear mandate to form government. Now, the BJP is to sit in Opposition and its rivals, the Congress and the NCP, to share power with the Shiv Sena.
“The BJP leadership in Jharkhand apprehends that forthcoming assembly polls in the state may witness the same trend seen in Haryana or Maharashtra for two major reasons. One, dismal performance on the part of its government and second, party’s failure to seal a seat-sharing pact with its ally AJSU in the state,” said a senior state BJP leader.
In the previous assembly polls, the BJP had contested in alliance with the All Jharkhand Students Union. They got 43 of 81 assembly seats defeating the grand-alliance of Congress, RJD, JDU and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha. However, this time the BJP-AJSU alliance is not in place as the BJP has announced its nominees without accommodating it oldest ally in the state. The two parties have never contested separately since the state of Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar in 2000.
Earlier, the AJSU and the LJP of Ram Vilas Paswan had announced its willingness to contest Jharkhand election in alliance with the BJP. But the LJP later made it clear that it will go alone. The AJSU is also apparently forced to follow the same path. Both are constituents of the BJP-led NDA.
There are some more factors that create further trouble for BJP. In 2014, the BJP had polled fewer votes than it secured in the Lok Sabha, when Narendra Modi was seeking his first term as the prime minister in Jharkhand. The BJP won 12 of 14 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 polling 40 per cent votes in the state. In 2014 Jharkhand election, BJP’s vote share came down to 31 per cent in the state. With ally AJSU, the total vote share was less than 35 per cent – a dip of over 5 per cent in mere five months. In 2019 Lok Sabha election, the BJP-led coalition had got over 55 per cent votes with the BJP winning 11 seats and the AJSU one.
The BJP’s vote share dipped significantly compared to its performance in the Lok Sabha elections in Haryana and Maharashtra. The BJP and the Prime Minister failed to convince voters that a vote for state government would be a vote for PM Modi. The BJP president Amit Shah, who is described by his supporter as ‘chanakya’ of the current politics, has set a target of winning 65 of the 81 seats in Jharkhand.
The crucial Forest Rights Act is another factor that is all set to play a significant role in the ongoing assembly polls in Jharkhand. The dissatisfaction of tribals with the slow implementation of the act, which offers formal recognition of forest-dwellers’ land rights, could be a deciding factor in more than 62 of the 81 assembly constituencies (over 77 percent) in the upcoming state elections in Jharkhand.
An analysis carried out by a non-governmental outfit Oxfam concludes that the number of Scheduled Caste & Scheduled Tribe voters eligible for land rights under the FRA is more than the margin of victory in the last election in 94 percent (58) of the 62 seats considered FRA-sensitive. Nearly 70 percent of the population in constituencies spread across Jharkhand–Chakradharpur, Gumla, Latehar and Simdega, for example–belongs to SC/ST categories.
Analysing the results of the 2014 assembly elections in these 62 constituencies, researchers concluded that any political party that promises effective implementation of the FRA and other laws protecting land rights of tribes people could defeat the incumbent BJP.