Ramesh Bhagat
The kind of victory that India Alliance has achieved under the leadership of Hemant Soren in Jharkhand would have been unimaginable even for Hemant Soren himself. India Alliance won 56 seats and NDA was limited to 24 seats only. The trend of this victory was decided with the opening of the EVM boxes on 23rd November. All the exit poll figures were destroyed. After this victory, if there is any discussion in the entire Jharkhand from every square to the social media, then only Kalpana Soren, Chief Minister Maiya Samman Yojana, Electricity Bill Waiver Scheme are being discussed.
The situation in Jharkhand which was there before Chief Minister Hemant Soren went to jail, changed completely after his going to jail. Before going to jail, corruption in the state, looting of government schemes and weakness of law and order were the topics of discussion. But when Chief Minister Hemant Soren returned from jail and announced the Chief Minister Maiya Samman Yojana, the situation changed again. The people of Jharkhand started seeing direct benefits from the announcements made one after the other. Be it Chief Minister Maiya Samman Yojana in the form of one thousand rupees each, Electricity Bill Waiver Scheme, Agricultural Loan Waiver Scheme or Abua Awas Yojana, all together crushed BJP’s Bangladeshi issue, Demographic Change, Land Jihad. .
Remember that when Chief Minister Hemant Soren was in jail and Lok Sabha elections were announced in the country, his wife Kalpana Soren came out of Hemant Soren’s house. He went among the people and addressed election meetings across the state. People were so impressed by his speech style that people started coming from far and wide to hear and see him. During this time, Kalpana Soren used to salute the big leaders present on the stage with the image of a better daughter-in-law, moving away from the traditional style of giving speech, she gave speech by walking on the middle stage and instead of speaking on the opposition in the speech, she expressed her party’s views, Hemant The priority was to forcibly send Soren to jail. People used to return to their homes mesmerized by his style. Due to which India Alliance captured all the five Lok Sabha seats of Jharkhand. This victory of the India Alliance established Kalpana Soren as the star campaigner of JMM in the entire state.
When the battle for Jharkhand Assembly elections started, Hemant Soren’s visionary plans along with Kalpana Soren’s star campaigner image gave the India Alliance a huge majority. This is the first time in Jharkhand that a party-alliance has got majority while being in power.
BJP itself was a major reason for the victory of JMM alliance. If we look at the leaders of the state BJP, we find that Babulal Marandi, who was the Chief Minister of Jharkhand in the year 2000, remained the leader of the BJP even in the year 2024. There were so many opposing factions within the party that BJP had to bring leaders from other states to Jharkhand. At the same time, BJP gave tickets to the leaders of other parties by breaking them, the effect of which was that resentment increased among the workers within the BJP itself. Many leaders fled the BJP and those who remained remained inactive due to resentment. During the entire election, instead of fighting the India alliance, the BJP remained busy in solving the confusion of its leaders and workers and took the majority of Jharkhand with it to the JMM alliance.
If we look at this massive victory from the statistical point of view, we find that in the last assembly elections of 2019, JMM had won 30 seats by securing 18.72 percent votes, whereas this time it has secured 34 seats by securing 23.44 percent votes. In the last election, BJP had brought 25 seats by getting 33.37 percent votes, whereas this time it has brought only 21 seats by getting 33.18 percent votes. In this election, Congress got 1.68 percent more votes and was able to get only 16 seats like last time. This time, RJD won 4 seats, Left won 2 seats, LJP won 1 seat, Jairam Mahato’s party won one seat, while AJSU was reduced to just one seat.
(Disclaimer: Ramesh Bhagat is a senior journalist and has been closely following the politics of Jharkhand. The views presented in the article are the personal views of the author. The author himself is responsible for the veracity/accuracy of any information given in the article. For this News18Hindi Not liable.)
FIRST PUBLISHED: November 25, 2024, 19:06 IST
