The Central Election Committee of the BJP on Sunday declared candidature of Louis Marandi and Yogeshwar Mahto Batul for Dumka and Bermo Assembly seats respectively where the by-election is set to be held on November 3.
The Central leadership took a calculated decision to repeat the candidates in the by-election instead of fielding new faces. Both Marandi and Mahto had won their seat respectively in the 2014 Assembly election but they lost in the 2019 Assembly election.
In the 2014 Assembly election, Marandi had defeated the then chief minister and JMM working president Hemant Soren. Batul had defeated the sitting Congress minister Rajndra Prasad Singh.
But in the 2019 assembly election they were defeated by their very rival whom they had defeated in 2014.
For Dumka seat the BJP had no choice of candidate other than Marandi and the state BJP election committee had proposed only her name. But for the Bermo seat it was tough for the BJP to finalise names.
The election committee of the state BJP broadly discussed probable names. Other than Batul; Mrigank Shekhar and five-time BJP MP from Giridih Ravindra Pandey were the front runners. But the central leadership decided to field Batul since Mrigank is relatively a new face whereas the Ajsu Party supporting the BJP was not keen to support Pandey.
By- election at both seats became necessitated after Hemant Soren who won from Barhait seat quit Dumka seat. Bermo seat was vacated following the death of Rajendra Prasad Singh.
The JMM has fielded Basant Soren, younger son of JMM chief Shibu Soren where the Jai Mangal Singh, son of Rajendra Singh will contest from Bermo seat.
For the by-election both the ruling UPA and the NDA opposition have chalked out strategy for the election. The BJP is focussing on booth level management.
All top leaders of UPA and NDA are set to campaign. Union Minister Arjun Munda, former Chief Minister Babulal Marandi, national vice presidents Raghubar Das and Annapurna Devi will campaign for the BJP candidates.