People's Democracy

JHARKHAND

BJP State Govt In Jitters After Rout In Elections

D D Ramanandan

IT is a complete rout of BJP in Jharkhand in the 14th Lok Sabha elections.  It lost all its 11 sitting seats out of the total 14 seats in Jharkhand and had to be content with only one seat. In the final tally Congress had 6, JMM won 4, RJD 2 and CPI got one. BJP not only lost seats but also lost in percentage of votes. In 1999, BJP secured 46.6 per cent of votes polled. In the 2004 elections, the percentage of votes of BJP dropped to 32.9 percent, a drop of 13.7 per cent. All the three central ministers in the Vajpayee government – Yashwant Sinha, Karia Munda and Nagmani – were defeated this time. In the 1996 elections, BJP had won 12 seats; in 1998 and in 1999 they it had won 11 seats. But this time its tally fell to just one seat.

The lone seat which the BJP could win was Koderma, from which former chief minister Babulal Marandi contested. Here the opposition could not arrive at an understanding leading to both the Congress and JMM candidates being in the fray. The CPI(ML) candidate in Koderma also secured substantial votes. As a result, opposition secular votes were divided leading to the BJP’s lone victory.

COMMUNAL CAMPAIGN

This was the first general election after formation of Jharkhand in November 2000. It may be recalled that Jharkhand has a BJP-led state government in power. Apart from ‘India Shining’ and ‘feel good’ campaign the BJP’s main plank of campaign was that it was Atal Bihar Vajpayee’s government which created the Jharkhand state.  As usual their target of attack were Christians amongst the adivasis. The attempt was to pit non-Christian adivasis against the minority Christian adivasis and missionaries.

It may be recalled that Atal Bihari Vajpayee as prime minister of the nation addressed the adivasis in Ranchi from a RSS platform, Vanavasi Kalyan Kendra, on February 1, 2004. The RSS chief K S Sudarshan launched his vitriolic tirade against Christian adivasis and missionaries with Vajpayee sitting on the dais, endorsing the tirade by his silence.

However, the people of Jharkhand did not endorse such communal approach and decisively rejected BJP and its allies in the elections.  They also rejected its fraudulent ‘India Shining’ campaign which tried to gloss over the reality of large-scale closure of factories, mines central PSUs, privatisation drive and disinvestment’s negative impact. The people reeled under the ever soaring prices of essential commodities, several districts reported hunger deaths and massive labour migration for jobs and food. Those who stayed in the villages were living in sub-human conditions. The public distribution system had completely broken down and there was complete absence of food security in the poverty stricken adivasi areas.

The results were a clear verdict against both the BJP-led central government and the BJP state government’s anti-poor economic policies and the cruel hoax of ‘India Shining’ and ‘feel good’ campaigns. It was a vote against communal and divisive polices of the Sangh Parivar with the entire state witnessing a polarised polling against the BJP and its allies.

CHANGE IN THE OFFING

Amongst the Left parties, the CPI defeated union foreign minister, Yaswant Sinha, in Hazaribagh with a convincing margin of 1.05 lakh votes. The CPI candidate, Bhubaneswar Pd. Mehta, who is also the state secretary of the party, fought in alliance with all opposition parties including the Left parties excepting CPI-ML (Liberation). The other Left candidate, A K Roy of Marxist Co-ordination Committee (MCC), secured 1.47 lakh votes in Dhanbad constituency. Roy, who is also vice president of CITU state committee stood third. At Ranchi, from which the CPI(M) contested for the first time, its candidate Rajendra Singh Munda could secure 37,688 votes in a polarised  situation between the BJP and the Congress alliance. In one assembly segment Silli it was a straight contest between the BJP and the CPI(M) with the Congress remaining a distant third.

The results of Lok Sabha elections will have its fall out on the functioning of the BJP state government. The speaker of the assembly, who belongs to the JD(U) resigned and contested and lost the election. The deputy speaker belonging to Congress, who also contested got elected in the Lok Sabha. Seven other MLAs also got elected to the Lok Sabha in a 81 member house.  Further, the present number of ministers shall have to be brought down from 25 to 12 by July 12 as per the recent amendment in Parliament. All these will bring political turmoil in the state with every possibility of the fall of the state government and early assembly polls, which are originally scheduled to take place in February next year. The change of government at the centre will have lot of bearing in the politics of the state. The toiling sections are looking towards the Left for taking up their cause which was not the position at the time of the election. Substantial political change is expected to take place in the coming days in Jharkhand.