With BJP announcing its candidates on 80 seats, the party has made it clear that it will go alone in the polls. However, both the BJP and AJSU have not fielded their candidates from Silli and Jamshedpur East seats respectively keeping the post poll alliance option open.
On Wednesday evening, the BJP announced its fifth list announcing the names for eight Assembly constituencies, which includes Pakur (Beni Prasad Gupta), Barkagaon (Loknath Mahto), Ramgarh (Rananjay Kumar), Dumri (Pradeep Sahu), Gomiya (Laxman Nayak), Tundi (Vikram Pandey), Jamshedpur (Devendra Singh), Kanke ( Samri Lal).
Interestingly, BJP has not announced its candidate from Silli, from where AJSU party chief and former deputy chief minister Sudesh Mahto is contesting election. Moreover, the AJSU party too has not announced its candidates from Jamshedpur East the seat held by Chief Minister Raghubar Das.
Das who has been representing Jamshedpur East for five terms consecutively is in electoral fray from Jamshedpur for sixth term.
However, this time all eyes are on Jamshedpur east as rebel BJP leader and Chief Minister former cabinet colleague Saryu Roy too is contesting election from seat.
Opposition party Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) has announced to support Roy from the seat for his crusade against corruption.
BJP State general secretary Deepak Prakash said, “Our alliance partner chief Sudesh Mahto is contesting election from Silli so as a political courtesy we have decided not to put up candidates in Silli.”
Prakash also said, “AJSU party is still our alliance partners as its leader sits in NDA meeting.
AJSU party MP Chandra Prakash Choudhary sits with NDA leaders in Lok Sabha.” On being asked from BJP leader then why AJSU party is contesting election separately, he said, “Every political party has its political ideology and aspirations to expand its base.”
Meanwhile, on Thursday the AJSU party released another list for four Assembly constituencies which includes Varsha Gadi from Ranchi, Madhav Lal Mahto from Nala, Ganga Narayan Rai from Madhupur, Awadesh Kumar from Jharia.
The four seats for which the AJSU party announced its candidates, the BJP had already announced its candidates. State Urban Development minister and five terms Ranchi MLA CP Singh is once again in electoral fray from Ranchi.
AJSU party general secretary, Deoshran Bhagat said, “We are contesting election for winning the seat and not for making someone lose the seat.”
On being asked why the party has not fielded candidate from Jamshedpur east, Bhagat said, “We are fielding candidates from seats where we are strong.”