In a major jolt to BJP and especially party chief Babulal Marandi the party lost all five tribal reserved seats-- Khunti, Singhbhum, Lohardaga, Rajmahal and Dumka. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP lost two seats-Rajmahal and Singhbhum and retained the Khunti seat with a slender margin.
While the Congress won the Khunti, Lohardaga seats, the JMM despite its biggest star campaigner and former chief minister Hemant Soren in jail the party won three seats—Rajmahal, Dumka and Singhbhum seats.
Till filling of report, in Khunti, Union minister and sitting MP Arjun Munda was trailing to Congress's Kalicharan Munda by around 1.09 lakh votes, according to the Election Commission. Likewise, in Lohardaga, Sukhdeo Bhagat of Congress was leading by 49,584 votes. In Singhbhum, JMM's Joba Manjhi was leading by 80,393 votes over her nearest rival Geeta Kora of the BJP after the seventh round of counting, officials said.
Kora, wife of former Jharkhand chief minister Madhu Koda, joined the BJP just ahead of Lok Sabha polls. She was the lone Congress MP in the state.
JMM's Vijay Hansdak was leading by 41,684 votes over BJP's Tala Marandi in Rajmahal (ST) seat.
In Dumka, BJP's Sita Soren who was leading earlier over JMM's Nalin Soren is now trailing by 3,902 votes in a tight contest. Sita, a three-time JMM legislator, too joined BJP just ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.
The results is setback to BJP and its leadership in State as two tribal leaders Babulal Marandi and union minister Arjun Munda fails to convince tribals of state.
Political watchers attributed this backlash from the tribals to various reasons. First, the BJP could not effectively counter the Opposition narrative set during the Raghubar Das regime that the party would change the CNT (Chotanagpur Tenancy) Act and remove the shield which protected their land. They continued to see the BJP with the suspicion that they would lose their land once the saffron party came into power.
The BJP workers, who could have countered this narrative, were not enthusiastic and galvanised at the grassroots level. Second, the BJP’s charge that the JMM and the Congress leaders are thoroughly corrupt also apparently did not convince the tribal voters. “Who is not corrupt? They often retorted.
A massive campaign was done in these seats by INDIA Bloc leaders including AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi and Kalpana Soren, wife of jailed former Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren who is credited with infusing a new life in JMM.
Insiders say that infighting within the BJP also played spoilsport for the party. In 2019, NDA won 12 seats in the state while Congress and JMM claimed one seat each.
There was also a lack of communication between the state level election managers and the ground level workers. The consequences of this had to be borne. In most of the Lok Sabha constituencies, the people appointed by the BJP as election in-charges were such people who had never contested any election. In the cities, the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi worked but in the rural areas, the BJP could not find a solution to the tribal and Muslim equation of JMM-Congress.
