Jharkhand: BJP's Tactical Gamble

As the BJP seeks a solo majority in Jharkhand, it grapples with Chief Minister Hemant Soren's corruption allegations while capitalising on a new electoral strategy. The Narendra Modi-led NDA government has made a bold statement regarding its increasing success in combating Naxalite terror, with the Election Commission announcing on Tuesday that the Jharkhand legislative assembly election will be held in two phases. Since Jharkhand’s creation as a separate state on November 15, 2000, following the bifurcation of Bihar, the state has always witnessed multiple-phase polling.

While the first assembly election in 2005 saw at least three phases, subsequent elections in 2009, 2014, and 2019 were spread over five phases each. The decision to hold Jharkhand polls in two phases this time comes in the wake of Home Minister Amit Shah's assertion that Naxalism will be eradicated from the country by March 2026.

The Election Commission fixed the poll schedule after taking feedback from the federal home ministry and the state administration to work out logistics, including the availability and deployment of central paramilitary forces. It is assumed that the Home Ministry must have painted an all-iswell picture, assuring that adequate troops would be made available to the poll panel for deployment across the 81 constituencies. Of these, 43 constituencies will vote in the first phase on November 13, while the remaining 38 seats will go to polls on November 20, coinciding with Maharashtra's single-phase polling for all 288 constituencies.

Jharkhand was among the handful of states that delivered a shocker to the Modi-led BJP in 2019. In the Lok Sabha polls, the BJP won 11 out of 14 seats in the state. However, it found itself at the receiving end in the state assembly elections held later that year, winning just 25 seats in the 81-member assembly. The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) alliance, which included the Congress party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), won a clear majority by bagging 47 seats.

Although the BJP has ruled the eastern state for nearly 13 years since its formation 24 years ago, it has failed to win a simple majority on its own in the four assembly polls held so far. Its best performance came in 2014 when it managed to win 37 seats, marking the first time in Jharkhand's history that a government completed its full five-year term. To its credit, the BJP's voting percentage has been gradually increasing in the state, indicating its growing penetration in rural and tribal areas.

In the 2019 assembly polls, the BJP polled 33.37 per cent of the votes and won just 25 seats, compared to 30 seats won by the JMM, which polled only 18.72 per cent. What gives the BJP confidence that it could win Jharkhand on its own this time is the fact that it polled a remarkable 44.60 per cent of votes in the June Lok Sabha polls in the state. However, Jharkhand is one of the states where a better performance in parliamentary elections does not necessarily translate into success in assembly polls.

After witnessing turmoil in the hung assemblies elected in 2005 and 2009, Jharkhand appears to have entered a phase where it has begun to realise the importance of political stability. If the Raghubar Das-led BJP government served its full five-year tenure between 2014 and 2019, the JMMled alliance also managed to complete its term despite occasional turmoil, including 153 days of Champai Soren as chief minister while incumbent chief minister Hemant Soren was in jail following his arrest in a land scam case.

For once, the BJP appears to be a combative and cohesive unit in the state, although its erstwhile central minister Yashwant Sinha, who served as a senior minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, has announced plans to field candidates for his newly launched Atal Vichar Manch. Sinha has been at odds with Modi since he became prime minister a decade ago, as he did not secure a ministerial berth in the Modi government. While he might have named his party after Atal Bihari Vajpayee, he was in the Trinamool Congress until recently. He may be targeting the BJP, but he is likely to end up splitting the anti-BJP votes. A lot seems to have changed in Jharkhand since the BJP was voted out of power in 2019.

The party is now in power for the first time ever in neighbouring Odisha, with tribal leader Mohan Charan Majhi serving as chief minister. The Modi government's move to make Droupadi Murmu, a native of Odisha, India's President—the first tribal ever to occupy the highest constitutional post—might also be a factor. This move has endeared the BJP to tribal voters in Odisha and could resonate with Jharkhand's tribal population as well, since Murmu previously served as the Governor of Jharkhand.

The allegations of corruption against incumbent chief minister Hemant Soren could be another factor. Although he was released on bail and regained his post in July, he still faces several corruption charges. The Soren family has a history of corruption, with Hemant's father, Shibu Soren, accused of accepting a bribe to bail out the minority PV Narasimha Rao government at the centre in 1993.

As a tactical move, the BJP may not name anyone as its chief ministerial candidate in Jharkhand and instead seek votes in the name of its most popular face, Narendra Modi, in view of how this strategy helped the BJP win in Odisha and Haryana earlier this month. Moreover, the BJP cannot afford to reignite factional fights that might erupt if it names a particular leader from among various claimants as its chief ministerial face. Additionally, the BJP hopes that the call for a double-engine government as the best model of development might work in Jharkhand.