Lok Sabha Elections 2019: Dumka denies Shibu Soren his record ninth term
Shibu Soren, the eight-time MP from Dumka, who was in the contest to secure a record ninth term, lost by a margin of over 47,000 votes to BJP’s Sunil Soren.
The defeat of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) supremo and former union minister Shibu Soren from the Dumka Lok Sabha seat was a major setback for Jharkhand’s principal opposition party, which was looking to proliferate its prospects beyond the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

The eight-time MP from Dumka, who was in the contest to secure a record ninth term, lost by a margin of over 47,000 votes. Soren received 4,36,158 votes while his rival, BJP candidate Sunil Soren received 4,83,748 votes to deny the JMM patriarch a record ninth term in the Lok Sabha. The JMM supremo received 43 per cent of the total valid votes, compared to 48 per cent votes received by BJP’s Sunil Soren. The victory comes as a satisfying payback for Sunil Soren, who was defeated by Shibu Soren in the 2009 and 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
This was the third time Shibu Soren lost from Dumka. He was first defeated by Congress in 1984, following the assassination of late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and then in 1998 by Babulal Marandi, who was then a part of BJP.
It was a poor show by JMM overall as well, as the party was defeated in the Giridih and Jamshedpur Lok Sabha seats. JMM’s only consolation will be its victory in the Rajmahal Lok Sabha seat of Santhal Parganas.
JMM candidate Vijay Kumar Hansdak registered win from the Rajmahal Lok Sabha seat, defeating BJP candidate Hemlal Murmu. If there was a Modi wave, Hansdak was the only JMM candidate who could withstand it in Rajmahal.
JMM candidate Jagannath Mahto lost from Giridih as AJSU party’s Chandra Prakash Choudhary won by massive a margin of more than 2.48 lakh votes. Party nominee Champai Soren also went down to BJP’s Bidyut Baran Mahato in Jamshedpur, losing by a margin of over 3 lakh votes.
JMM also failed in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj, where Shibu Soren’s daughter Anjali Soren could manage to get only 69,000 votes (12 per cent of the total valid votes), finishing a distant third.
Expressing happiness over the JMM supremo’s loss, chief minister Raghubar Das said Soren did not want to contest and forge an alliance with Congress, but his son (JMM working president Hemant Soren) didn’t support his father and didn’t get the people’s support in return.
Reacting to the party’s losses, JMM spokesperson Supriyo Bhattacharya welcomed the people’s mandate and congratulated Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team.
“The party has accepted Soren’s defeat as a challenge and would work hard to take avenge the loss in the upcoming assembly election. Our target would be the 18 assembly seats of the Santhal region in particular,” he said.
Also accepting the loss of the opposition Grand Alliance, which was led by JMM in Jharkhand, Bhattacharya exuded hope that the people who voted for NDA from a national perspective would be positive towards JMM from the perspective of Jharkhand, in the upcoming assembly elections.
