Nomination for the four constituencies —Rajmahal, Dumka, Godda, Dhanbad — scheduled to go for polls on April 24 today gained momentum with as many as 10 nominations made by candidates across political parties thus taking the final tally of nominations to 20.
Today’s nomination saw some controversial and some big names in the poll fray this time. The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) candidate for Rajmajhal Vijay Hansda filed nomination while the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajtantrik) man Samresh Singh filed nomination for Dhanbad parliamentary seat. Interestingly, controversy surrounded Hansda when he shunned Congress and joined JMM forcing the Congress to react angrily about the development. Hansda, son of former Congress State president Thomas Hansda, also became the bone of contention between the JMM and Simon Marandi who is also a minister in JMM-Congress-RJD coalition government.
The ASJU party which gained strength since Jharkhand was carved out has fielded former Women’s Commission Chairperson Hemlata S Mohan from Dhanbad. Mohan, who is among several new faces to enter politics in the wake of elections, filed nomination today at Dhanbad.
Notably, other candidates to file nomination on April 2 were — Arjun Prasad Singh (AJSU) for Rajmahal, Chaya Kol (CPI) for Dumka, Geeta Mandal (CPI-MP) and Damodar Singh (TMC) for Godda besides Anand Mahato (Marxist Coordination), Rupesh Kumar Mukherjee (Samta Party) and Kishore Kumar Murmu (Bahujan Mukti Party) for Dhanbad lok Sabah seat.
Incidentally, the Election Commission has also expressed concern over possible use of money in Jharkhand during elections and incidents of money in transit over and above the specified limit set by the Election Commission of India only added to the concerns expressed by the officials of the commission.
As many as 17 incidents of suspicious flow of money were reported till Wednesday in different parts of Jharkhand. Based on the suspicion about the possible use or misuse of money the electoral offices have confiscated the money mostly in transit. Notably, maximum cases, seven cases, were reported at Hazaribagh which is scheduled to go to polls on April 17.