Jharkhand: guide to results

Published here
Ranchi, April 15

The BJP in Jharkhand will go into counting day confident that, on paper, it remains in contest in all 14 seats.

However, by making the elections all about itself - the party contested alone, and along with the JVM(P), is the only one to contest in all seats - the BJP state unit is flirting with the failure tag. Even one less than eight, which was the number of seats won in 2009, would have the panic bells going off.

Party leaders are confident of winning more than 10 seats. "We are guaranteed 12 seats. Giridih and Rajmahal are the two in which we are facing a tough contest," said BJP leader and MLA Raghubar Das. The Congress says it, along with alliance partner JMM, has a chance in eight constituencies. "I think we can win in Ranchi, Lohardaga, Hazaribagh, Dhanbad, Godda, Giridih, Rajmahal and Dumka," said state Congress General Secretary Shailesh Sinha.

There clearly cannot be a universe where both the BJP and Congress can go home happy. The confusion is evident in the exit poll results: NDTV thinks BJP will win 12 and leave the Congress only one, while Times Now estimates the Congress and JMM will win six. Both agree that former chief minister Madhu Kora's wife Geeta will win from Singhbhum.

Early warning could come from two constituencies - Giridih and Rajmahal, which both sides admit to be unknown territories. The BJP, in a "direct fight" with the JMM in both, knows winning the two will make it unstoppable. If the latter wins in Giridih, it will be a major blow for the BJP, whose incumbent MP won by 94,738 votes in 2009. It will also mean that the JMM votebank is robust, having withstood an assault from alliance partner Congress, whose leader Rajendra Prasad wanted the seat for his son. A JMM win will also mean the rise of a new Mahato leader in Jagarnath Mahato. That Rajmahal - and not Dumka - should be the barometer of Santhal Pargana is curious: BJP's victory hinges on adivasi votes in the constituency, which has a significant number of Muslims. The party hopes that former JMM leader Hemlal Murmu can get some tribal votes while hoping the RSS, which has been active in the area for about 25 years, can use the hype around Narendra Modi to rally Sanskritised adivasis.

However, even if the BJP completes a clean sweep, it may not be evidence enough of a pan-Jharkhand "Modi Wave": the difficult terrain, demographics and cultural differences in the state mean imposing a wave was always out of the question for the BJP. Even winning Dumka - stronghold of the JMM - may be interpreted as a Babulal Marandi effect, with the JVM(P) leader taking away JMM's votes, leading to a BJP victory.

However, there may be a Modi effect on view. The tribals remained largely disinterested in Narendra Modi - in fact, the Sarna Samiti, widely perceived to be moving towards the BJP, supported Congress candidates in Ranchi and Lohardaga. This has been used by the BJP in the Santhal Pargana to mobilise the non-tribal "diku" vote of the caste Hindus. The hype of a Wave was also used to activate cadres and banish disquiet - in Palamu and Hazaribagh, those dissenting against "outsider" candidates eventually fell in line to work for a Modi victory.

If the BJP candidates in Ranchi and Jamshedpur win, it could be evidence of a Modi Wave in these largely urban constituencies. These two constituencies are significant because the BJP was up against the wall in both places - Jamshedpur, where its candidate lost his deposit in a 2011 bye poll and whose incumbent MP is a very popular; Ranchi, where AJSU's Sudesh Mahto was poised to eat into BJP's Ram Tahal Choudhary's Mahato base.

The BJP also claims that the poll percentages going up in the state - from 50.97 in 2009 to 63.55 now - is because of a Modi Wave. While one cannot verify this claim yet, there remains the possibility that Muslims voted in large numbers too, by getting women to come out and vote. A BJP leader claimed caste Hindus had voted to counter that. "Only 52 per cent Muslims voted in Jamshedpur. The rest were women and youth coming out to vote for NaMo," he said, explaining how polling percentage went up from 51.12 in 2009 to 66.38 this time there.

Apart from Geeta Kora in Singhbhum, smaller parties stand a chance to spoil the BJP's party. The CPI (ML) Liberation has mobilised the dalits of Koderma effectively. In Khunti, no one really understands the impact of the alleged support extended by left wing extremist PLFI to Anosh Ekka.

A Modi Wave in Jharkhand?

Published here
Sahibganj, April 24

As the three-phased voting in Jharkhand came to a close on Thursday, the BJP - which had won eight seats in 2009 and retains seven now - remains in contention in all 14 seats.

With the possibility of a clean sweep looming - the party won 12 in 1996 as well as '98 - state-based leaders are quick to attribute it to a "Modi Wave." The question assumes significance because of the adivasis in the state, who comprise 26.2 per cent of the population.

ADIVASIS

Have the adivasis voted for Modi? The definitive answer will come only after May 16, but even the state BJP answers in the negative. Khunti, which has the maximum proportion of adivasi population - at 73.3 per cent - might elect BJP's Kariya Munda, but its voters have done so seven times already.

A "wave" can be substantiated if the party wins in areas where it has traditionally found the going tough. In that sense, the Dumka and Rajmahal - the former a JMM stronghold, the latter, a Congress one - in the Santhal Pargana region are critical for the BJP. In both constituencies, the BJP claims "padhe-likhe" [literate, educated] Santhalis will vote for Narendra Modi. A similar claim is made by the JVM(P), which claims the padhe-likhe adivasis will vote for Babulal Marandi. Either way, a new votebank from among the adivasis - identified as the tribal middle class by anthropologists - is emerging and is up for grabs.

However, in Dumka as well as Rajmahal, the BJP depends on extraneous factors for victory. In Dumka, there is the hope that Sunil Soren, who lost to Shibu Soren by only 18,812 votes in 2009, will win when Babulal Marandi splits the JMM's Santhal-Muslim votebank. The BJP hopes to retain the diku [outisder, caste Hindu] votes and that Marandi will not eat into it. At Rajmahal, with significant number of Muslims, the party hopes that the RSS's 20-odd years of work among the Santhals have Sanskritised them enough to split the JMM votebank. Here, Narendra Modi could act as a catalyst in bringing over these Sanskritised Santhals to vote along with dikus, their former exploiters.

DALITS

In Chatra, a district where 32.6 percent of the population is Scheduled Caste, this reporter could not find any dalit at the March 27 Modi rally despite talking to about 20 people. No political party except the CPI-ML considers the dalits, 12.1 per cent of the population, as a votebank. While there seemed to be an upper caste-OBC Modi wave in Chatra, the CPI-ML's strategy seems to have paid off, as it is reportedly giving the BJP sweaty palms in Koderma, where the namesake district has only one per cent of adivasis, 15.2 per cent dalits and where Bihar-like caste politics prevail.

MUSLIMS

One of the best questions to ask voters this election was, "Why will you vote?" At Pakur district's Rahaspur village, Ashraful Haque gave the most complicated answer, "Some Muslims here might have even vote for the BJP, because only local BJP leaders help us when we go to them with our problems. But not this time. We don't want our votes to help Narendra Modi. We are scared," he said.

This fear was used by Congress's Ranchi candidate Subodh Kant Sahay, who called a meeting of Muslim mohalla leaders and managed to get an assurance of votes. The elders reportedly refused to take any gifts in return. This, despite Muslims being angry with Sahay as he did little for the evicted residents of the encroachment called Islam Nagar in Ranchi city.

A mere claim of a Modi Wave was not enough in the third phase, as Bihar-based leader Giriraj Singh's April 18 comments in Deoghar and Bokaro about Modi's opponents having to go to Pakistan was clearly intended to unite the caste Hindus in the Santhal Pargana region, with a significant Muslim population.

WHAT SHOULD A WAVE LOOK LIKE?

Ideally a wave could mean that castes and communities that stayed away in 2009 were now rooting for the BJP. There seemed to be a rural-urban divide to this: significant in Jharkhand as 76 per cent of the population lives in rural areas. In urban Jamshedpur, the trading communities and upper middle class seemed to be shifting allegiance over to the BJP after supporting the JVM's Ajay Kumar in the 2011 by-poll. The poll percentage also shot up from 51-52 in the last two elections to 65 per cent.

Except for the Telis - the caste to which Modi belongs - the BJP was not expecting any new castes from the rural areas in its bouquet. The upper caste-OBC Modi Wave in Chatra may not have been a wave, after all - they have voted for the BJP before, too. In that sense, the Modi Wave in Jharkhand was essentially a re-strengthening of the BJP's core votebanks: polarise along Hindu-Muslim fault lines and then ensure that its votebanks remained un-split and delivering maximum votes.

This fortification of votebanks was visible in Hazaribagh and Palamu, where highly-qualified candidates - Harvard graduate Jayant Sinha and former DGP V.D. Ram - had to resort to praying for a Modi Wave. Their prayers could have been answered in a literal manner, as anecdotal evidence suggests that the Ram Navami celebrations organised by Sangh Parivar organisations could have attracted voters who might have gone elsewhere. The enthusiasm around a Modi Wave visibly activated the cadres too, whose work could explain why Jamshedpur recorded an unexpectedly high turnout.