JVM chief Babulal Marandi as well his close lieutenant Pradeep Yadav maintained suspense over contesting the forthcoming parliamentary elections as the duo did not figure in the list of 12 candidates announced by the party on Thursday but keeping the two seats, Dumka and Gooda, vacant.
“Names for the two remaining seats, Dumka and Godda, would be declared within a week time,” said party general secretary and legislative body leader Pradeep Yadav. “Our all major party workers came today and after consultation the election committee and party leader unanimously finalised names of candidate for the lS polls for 12 seats,” said Yadav.
Interestingly, the party has named Pranav Verma for the Koderma seat, presently being represented by Babulal Marandi. The Pioneer was first to report that Marandi would not contest the poll this time in the wake of his greater interest in State politics than national. Nevertheless, the party has retained Dr Ajoy Kumar from Jamshedpur, another representative of the party in Parliament. Interesting name in the list is AK Mishra who would contest polls from Hazaribagh. Mishra is director of renowned Civil Services coaching institute Chanakya IAS Academy. Another high profile name is of Amitabh Chaudhary, the incumbent chief of Jharkhand State Cricket Association.
Talking about not fielding Marandi for the battle-2014, Yadav said that party workers in great numbers want him to contest and the decision had been left to him. “There is huge pressure on him to contest from the party workers but he does want to contest. He wants to concentrate entirely on better poll management,” said the leader. With this the party also put brake on speculations on any kind of coalition with any other political party and also the future of still in making ‘Third Front’. The party made it clear that no alliance would take place in the State and the JVM would contest all the 14 seats available for lS and possibly all the Assembly seats in future.
“We are in the favour of Third Front but any kind of understanding in this regard would take place post poll only. We would not be part of any coalition in the State,” said Yadav. Earlier addressing party workers in a working committee meet, Marandi hailed the support his party is getting from all quarters. “I am getting tremendous feedback about JVM not only in the State but nationally. The party has made inroads in every class and caste. Out fight is against corruption and people of Jharkhand have seen all the national parties and are also aware of character of AJSU and JMM who have been playing second fiddle to either BJP or Congress,” said the former Chief Minister.
He called upon party workers to send out a message among voters that parties and leaders sitting in Delhi would not be allowed to dictate terms to residents of the State any longer and justified the role of regional satraps citing examples of Tamil Nadu where regional parties gave “the best governance in the country”.
On the other, combine of Congress, JMM and RJD is still in a huddle to finalise names. Whereas the coalition running the Government in the State is almost settled for 8-4-4 formula (Congress-JMM-RJD) some seats such Chatra and Giridih are presenting a challenge before leadership. “list is almost final and by March 10 all the names would be announced,” said Congress State president Sukhdeo Bhagat. Though, the party made it clear that senior leader Rajendra Singh would not contest lok Sabha polls from Giridih, as is being speculated.
JMM and AJSU have also called a meeting on March 7 and March 9 respectively. The BJP state election committee is holding meeting tomorrow to shortlist the candidates.