Jharkhand Assembly Election 2019 Results: All eyes on verdict today – assembly elections

On Monday, the counting of votes for the 81 assembly seats will be held in Jharkhand where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government is facing an electoral challenge from an alliance of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), which, according to some exit polls, has an edge in the tribal state.

In the 19-year-old state, carved out of Bihar in 2000, political uncertainty and fractured mandates marked elections till 2014. Five years ago, the alliance of the BJP and its ally, the All Jharkhand Students Union, or the AJSU Party, registered a comfortable victory, riding on the popularity of Narendra Modi, who steered the BJP to a thumping win in the national elections earlier that year and became the Prime Minister.

The pre-poll alliance of the BJP (37) and the AJSU Party (5) won a total of 42 seats in 2014. And within months, six of the eight legislators of the Babulal Marandi-led Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik) joined the BJP. In Jharkhand’s short history, the BJP’s Raghubar Das has become the first chief minister to complete his term.

This time, the BJP and the AJSU parted ways after differences cropped up over seat-sharing, while the JMM, Congress and the RJD fought the elections together.

At least three exit polls predicted that the opposition alliance, which focused on local issues during the campaign, had an advantage this time. To be sure, exit polls have missed the mark on many occasions in the past, but if they hold true in Jharkhand, it would be a big setback for the BJP, which swept the summer’s Lok Sabha elections and won 11 of the 14 seats in the state.

Both camps have expressed confidence of winning the elections, which were held in five phases and saw the participation of around 65% of the state’s 23 million registered voters.

“We will cross the majority mark. Wait till counting. People has reposed faith in five years governance,” Deepak Prakash, a BJP general secretary, told IANS.

JMM general secretary Vinod Pandey said, “The grand alliance will certainly get majority. People are fed up with the BJP government.”

The spotlight will be on the Jamshedpur East seat, which CM Das has been winning since 1995. His former cabinet colleague, Saryu Rai, is challenging him this time.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah were among the top BJP leaders who campaigned in the state, focusing on national issues such as the Centre’s decision to withdraw Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and the newly amended citizenship act, among others. The party also extensively talked about the welfare projects of the central and state governments.

The Opposition’s campaign, on the other hand, put emphasis on local issues such as tribal and forest rights, land acquisition and alleged hunger deaths. It also focused on issues such as price rise, slowdown in economy and unemployment. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was among the Opposition’s star campaigners.

“PM Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah… urged voters to elect a ‘double engine’ government again, listing achievements of the central and the state governments. But if voters have still gone for a change in guard, it would clearly mean there was anti-incumbency. Also, people now think that they might have voted for Modi in Lok Sabha polls, but this was an election to choose a chief minister,” said LK Kundan, who teaches political science at Ranchi University.