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No alliance formula in Jharkhand urban polls as JMM, Congress back separate candidates
Scheduled for February 23, with results four days later, the municipal elections in the state are being conducted after five years and, in a departure from the past, the polls are being held on a non-party basis. However, all the mainstream parties, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is considered strong in the urban pockets of the state, the Congress, and the JMM, have announced support for specific candidates in the fray for the big-ticket mayoral posts in the nine municipal corporations, besides those of chairmen in most of the 20 municipal councils and 19 municipal panchayats across the state.
The elections to 48 urban local bodies across the state have now turned into a triangular contest, with the two principal allies of the ruling INDIA bloc, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and the Congress, officially extending support to candidates for key posts in most municipal institutions.
Scheduled for February 23, with results four days later, the municipal elections in the state are being conducted after five years and, in a departure from the past, the polls are being held on a non-party basis. However, all the mainstream parties, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is considered strong in the urban pockets of the state, the Congress, and the JMM, have announced support for specific candidates in the fray for the big-ticket mayoral posts in the nine municipal corporations, besides those of chairmen in most of the 20 municipal councils and 19 municipal panchayats across the state.
Friday was the last date for withdrawal of candidature. With no consensus on a joint candidate, both the JMM and the Congress have officially announced their choice of candidates, especially for the post of mayor in the nine corporations. While the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) is the third significant party in the alliance, it has limited presence in the urban areas, particularly in the municipal corporations.
The BJP, the lead partner in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), on the other hand, faces hardly any challenge from its regional allies, the AJSU Party, Janata Dal (United), and the Loktantrik Janshakti Party (Ramvilas), in the municipal polls.
Both the JMM and Congress leaders played down the development, rubbishing any inference of differences in the alliance, underlining that these are local body elections being conducted on a non-party basis.
“It’s not the assembly or Lok Sabha polls. The local body elections are contested on hyper-local issues, which differ even from one local body to another. In such elections, grassroots workers from all parties try to test their worth. Moreover, these polls are being held on a non-party basis. So it would be wrong to describe it as any differences in the alliance,” said Congress spokesperson Sonal Shanti.
JMM spokesperson Manoj Pandey echoed similar sentiments. “Since the polls are not being held on party symbols, local factors and even the personal connect of the candidates become some of the biggest factors in municipal polls. The party has given support to candidates who were already in the fray, a few of whom have been party workers for a long time. A few others have joined the party recently, inspired by the good work that the state government has been doing under the able leadership of our leader Hemant Soren,” added Pandey.
However, party insiders in both the JMM and the Congress also attribute the break in the alliance for the municipal polls to the experiment by the JMM leadership to expand its base in the urban pockets of the state. The nine municipal corporations in the state are located in major urban centres, including Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Dhanbad, Bokaro, Deoghar, Hazaribag, Giridih, and Medininagar, which have traditionally backed the BJP.
“The JMM has traditionally been strong in the rural belt, while the urban space has been dominated by the BJP and the Congress. Almost 90 per cent of the 34 seats the JMM won in the 81-member Jharkhand assembly are rural in nature. Despite a surge and wider acceptance of the JMM in the state under Hemant Soren, the big cities and towns are still dominated by the BJP. Being in power for six consecutive years, the JMM leadership is now testing its strength in urban pockets. And that is why the party has even backed rebels of other parties who are strong contenders,” said a senior JMM leader.
Former BJP Dhanbad mayor Chandrasekhar Agrawal is now the official candidate of the JMM in the coal city after joining the INDIA Bloc when the saffron party backed another leader, Sanjeev Agrawal, for the top post.
“One of the major reasons why the Hemat government decided to hold the polls on a non-party basis is to test its luck in the municipal polls. Though all parties are backing their own specific candidates, the fact that these polls are not being held on party symbols neutralises the impact of party strength to a great extent. One clear example is that in a few ULBs, there are multiple candidates from the same party despite the leadership threatening them with disciplinary actions,” said a Congress leader, adding weight to the theory of the JMM attempting to make inroads into urban Jharkhand.
