Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) legislators are set to fish out local issues worth being taken up as election agendas and prepare a blueprint for the upcoming assembly polls in the Legislative Party meeting scheduled on July 11 in Ranchi, party insiders said on Thursday.
After the humiliating defeat in Lok Sabha elections, wherein the party managed to win only one of the 14 Parliamentary seats in Jharkhand, JMM has decided to focus on local issues affecting people at the grass root level during the campaign for the assembly elections here.
“Lok Sabha was fought over national issues. Assembly election is a different ballgame,” said JMM’s Bahragora legislator Kunal Sarangi. Local issues affecting people in Jharkhand hinterland, he said, will be more important in the Assembly polls here. “We will focus on issues such as poor health facilities, unemployment, malnutrition and lack of education, and prepare a blueprint for our campaign,” said Sarangi, one of the youngest and highly qualified legislators in the JMM cadre.
The party, which is set to play the role of a big brother in the UPA alliance for the assembly election in Jharkhand, had to face embarrassment in its stronghold Santhal Pargana, where the party patriarch Shibu Soren lost to Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Sunil Soren in Dumka. Soon after the election results, the JMM said in an official statement released to the media that the party will avenge the loss of Dishom Guru Shibu Soren in the assembly elections and has already started preparing a roadmap for it.
JMM’s General Secretary Supriyo Bhattacharya said that the main objective behind the meeting on Saturday was to bring all legislators under one roof and exchange ideas for an effective election campaign. “Our legislators from across the State will float their ideas at the meeting. A blueprint for the election campaign will be prepared after a brainstorming session on Saturday,” he said.
With as many as 19 legislators in the 81-member Assembly in Jharkhand, JMM is the second largest party here. The party, however, played a second fiddle to the Congress party during the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. The JMM represented the Mahagathbandhan here in only four of 14 seats while the Congress party contested seven seats.