Jharkhand polls: The battle for the tribal vote

(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today edition dated November 4, 2024)
On October 19, as Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren addressed the media in capital Ranchi, he shared a key detail—that his party, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), and the Congress will be contesting 70 of the state’s 81 assembly seats, and ally Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Left parties the remaining 11. But asked about the candidates, the CM responded with a mere “these things can’t be disclosed yet”.
In contrast, the NDA betrayed no such hesitation in its declaration of seat-sharing or candidates. The BJP will contest 68 seats, the Sudesh Mahto-led All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU) Party 10, the Janata Dal (United) or JD(U) two, and Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party or LJP (Ram Vilas) one. The BJP has alr­eady released its first list of 66 candidates.
Poised to vote in two phases on Nov­e­mber 13 and 20, with results to be announced three days later, this will be Jharkhand’s fifth assembly election in its 24-year history, a period in which it has seen seven individuals occupy the chief minister’s chair on 13 separate occasions, and three bouts of President’s rule. Former BJP CM Raghubar Das is the only one to have lasted a full term beginning 2014; the 2005 assembly saw three CMs in five years. No party has been re-elected for a second consecutive term.
That jinx will no doubt weigh heavy on Hemant Soren’s mind as he sets out to seek re-election. Despite the alliance winn­ing a majority in the state in 2019, it has been a tumultuous five years in power. Soren has had to move his MLAs to Chhattisgarh twice to prevent alleged poaching attempts. Then, in 2022, alliance partner Congress had to suspend three MLAs after they were found with large sums of cash in West Bengal. Finally, Soren, like the CMs of other non-BJP-ruled states, found central investigative agencies coming after him as well. This saw him spend five months in jail in a case of forged documents for 8.86 acres of land in the Badgai area of Ranchi.
While this may have generated sympathy in Soren’s favour, the disarray in the alli­ance could play spoiler. No one missed the fact that on the day of his media interaction, when seat-sharing details were being discussed, Soren was flanked by Congress leaders, there was no one from the RJD or the Left. What appeared as strategic secrecy was perhaps nothing more than a lack of consensus within the INDIA bloc. Especially as both RJD scion Tejashwi Yadav and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi were in Ranchi on October 19 but there was no picture of them meeting.
On the same day, Tejashwi posted on X that the final decision on seat allocation would rest with RJD president Lalu Prasad, taking into account the party’s “strong position and social support base”. Soren did meet Tejashwi in Ranchi two days later, suggesting that all is well, but the truth is that the RJD won only one of the seven seats it contested in 2019. This perhaps explains the Congress and JMM’s reluctance to spare it more seats in the current round of negotiations.
Both sides, however, have discovered that they do better when in alliance. So, the JMM and Congress could win only 25 seats between them in 2014, a tally they improved to 47 in 2019 when they fought together. Likewise, the BJP secured only 25 seats in 2019 when it fought without an alliance partner, compared to the 42 it managed when fighting in alliance with AJSU in 2014. The JD(U) and LJP, now part of the NDA in Jhar­k­hand, fared even worse in 2019, forfeiting deposits in the seats they contested and getting just 2 per cent of the vote share. Both alliances must get their acts together if they have to make a go of it at the hustings.
CHALLENGES BEFORE BJP
This time round, the NDA’s coordination seems better than that of the INDIA bloc. Jharkhand has also been a BJP stronghold for long, the party having ruled the state for 13 of the 24 years of its existence. The dominance was reaffirmed in the Lok Sabha election earlier this year, when the NDA won nine of the state’s 14 parliamentary seats. As former CM Marandi put it, “We maintained leads in 51 assembly segments. Our task now is to secure an even larger majority in the assembly.”
The BJP’s troubles lie elsewhere—in the 28 constituencies reserved for the Scheduled Tribes (STs), who make up 28 per cent of the electorate. The party has been seeing a steady attrition in its vote in the tribal belt since 2019, when it won just two of the 28 seats reserved for STs, allowing the Soren-led JMM-Congress-RJD alliance to dislodge it from power. The trend continued in the 2024 general election—in the aftermath of Soren’s arrest four months earlier—with the BJP losing all the five Lok Sabha seats reserved for STs. And this despite realising the significance of the tribal vote (albeit belatedly) and appointing Marandi, a Santhal like Soren, president of the state BJP in July 2023.
By contrast, the JMM has traditionally had a strong hold over the state’s tribal voters, given that Hemant’s father Shibu Soren has been the most prominent tribal leader in Jharkhand. Hemant has built on this legacy by advocating for a domicile policy based on 1932 land records for government job eligibility and pushing for the recognition of the Sarna religion, which seeks a distinct identity for the nature-worshipping tribals. These moves have derailed the BJP project to subsume tribal groups under a broader Hindu identity.
Aware that it is some of this tribal vote that it needs wean away from the JMM, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already made two trips to the state in the past two months. On the second one, on October 2, he announced the Dharti Aaba Jantatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan, a Rs 79,150 crore welfare initiative that is expected to benefit the 50 million tribals in the country. In addition, say BJP sources, the party is planning at least seven campaign meetings by the PM.
Simultaneously, the party is examining its performance in the various reg­ions where tribal seats are distributed. So, in the Kolhan region, where the BJP was completely wiped out in 2019, losing all the 14 ST-reserved seats, the party is relying on three former tribal CMs—Champai Soren, Arjun Munda and Madhu Koda—to turn fortunes around. Champai, who left the JMM to join the BJP in August, and his son Babulal are contesting from Saraikela and Ghatshila, respectively. Koda, who had toppled the Arjun Munda-led government in 2006 to become CM, is now in the BJP camp alongside the latter. A prominent leader from the Ho tribe, Koda could play a crucial role in strengthening the BJP’s presence in the Kolhan region. His wife Geeta and Munda’s wife Meera will be contesting from Jagannathpur and Potka, respectively, and are expected to bolster the BJP’s prospects in Kolhan.
The Santhal Parganas is the other area of darkness for the BJP. Of the 18 seats here, the JMM won nine and the Congress four in 2019, on the back of strong tribals and minorities support. To break this, the BJP is now floating the slogan ‘Roti, Beti aur Maati’, suggesting that “Bangladeshi infiltrators” (read Muslims) are marrying their daughters and seizing their lands and jobs. However, the party’s hope of fielding Lois Marandi, who had defeated Hemant Soren in 2014 on a BJP ticket, came to nought as she joined the JMM on October 21.
THE JMM COUNTER
Since his release from jail and return as chief minister, Hemant has gone on an overdrive, launching a slew of welfare initiatives. In August, his government introduced the Maiyya Samman Yojana, a cash transfer scheme providing Rs 1,000 per month to women between the ages of 18 and 50. Just a day before the Election Commission ann­ounced the poll dates, the Soren cabinet promised to raise the stipend to Rs 2,500 per month from December onward. Other initiatives include waiving Rs 3,584 crore in unpaid electricity dues for nearly four million households, providing 200 units of free electricity to underprivileged families, and waiving Rs 400.66 crore of agricultural loans for 176,977 farmers.
The number of beneficiaries is significant. At 5.3 million, the labharthis of just Maiyya Samman are nearly a third of the 15 million votes cast in the 2019 state election and equivalent to the number of votes the JMM-Congress-RJD alliance polled.
As Suman K. Shrivastava, former advisor to the Jharkhand CM and guest faculty at a private university, says: “The BJP appears to have forged a smooth alliance, but their greater challenge lies in countering Soren’s goodwill among beneficiaries of the government’s schemes.” To counter that, the BJP has announced its ‘paanch pran’ or five resolutions: providing universal basic income to women, cooking fuel, jobs, unemployment allowance and housing.
As Hemant faces a formidable line-up of local BJP leaders, who will be joined by top central leaders for campaigning, giving him significant strength will be wife Kalpana, who emerged a leader in her own right while he was in jail. Her seamless connect with women voters, with whom she can often be seen sharing a meal, is expected to rally the female voters behind the JMM. “The purpose of this journey is to give dignity and respect to half the population,” she has said.
The main battle apart, several legacy battles will decide the political fate of individuals. There is Marandi, for one, who stepped down in 2003 after serving as the state’s first CM, and has done nothing of significance since. Should the BJP perform well, he has a chance to reclaim the top post. Three-time CM and former Union minister Arjun Munda, after losing his LS seat this time, will need a strong showing this election to retain political relevance. Among the legacy battles, the one Hemant’s estranged sister-in-law Sita is mounting will be the one to watch out for. Though she lost the LS poll, she is soliciting votes in the name of her late husband Durga Soren, eldest son of Shibu Soren.