E-Paper
Two tainted former ministers win elections in Jharkhand
The call to defeat jailed ministers or their spouse, given by different political parties mainly BJP and Congress, fell flat in Jharkhand, as people voted in favour of the tainted former ministers.
The call to defeat jailed ministers or their spouse, given by different political parties mainly BJP and Congress, fell flat in Jharkhand, as people voted in favour of the tainted former ministers.
Two of the four jailed former ministers won the assembly elections, while Gita Koda Biruli, wife of another jailed minister Madhu Koda, registered victory with a huge margin of 25,740 votes.
All leading political parties in their poll manifestoes had made corruption an issue. Leading poll campaigners, in their speeches, had time and again made fervent appeal from the voters to defeat the tainted ministers. But the voters, instead of rejecting the tainted former ministers, rejected the anti-corruption call and ensured victory of the tainted former ministers Harinarayan Rai and Enosh Ekka. Both won the elections while remaining in the central jail at Ranchi.
While Ekka retained his traditional seat Kolebira defeating Mahendra Bhagat (BJP) by a margin of 7502 votes, Rai won for the second consecutive term from Jarmundi seat by an impressive margin of 10,487 votes.
Gita secured 37,145 votes, while Ekka and Rai bagged 28,834 and 33,512 voted, respectively. The number of votes bagged by the tainted former ministers and Koda’s wife showed the people of the respective constituencies rejected the mainstream political parties's call to defeat tainted ministers.
The only jailed former minister who lost the election is Kamlesh Kumar Singh of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Kamlesh, with 14,540 votes, stood at fourth position in his home constituency, Hussainabad from where the Rashtriya Janta Dal's Sanjay Kumar Singh Yadav won, by bagging 26,735 votes.
