Election cycle starts with voting in Jharkhand today

Ranchi: Jharkhand will kick off crucial assembly elections on Wednesday as 13.7 million people across 43 of its 81 seats will vote in the first phase of polls and bypolls will be held in 32 seats across 10 states, marking the beginning of a high-stakes round of contests.

In Jharkhand, 13,710,717 electors are eligible to vote across15districts, covering most of the tribal seats in Kolhan and South Chhotanagpur division, where issues of tribal identity, infiltration, reservation, and corruption dominated the campaign.

“Polling across 43 seats would be held from 7am to 5pm. Polling parties have reached all the stations,”chief electoral officer K Ravi Kumar said.

Eyes will also be on the Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, where Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is making her poll debut on a seat vacated by her brother and leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi. She is up against Sathyan Mokeri of the Left and Navya Haridas of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in a seat that Rahul Gandhi — he chose to retain his other seat , Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh — won by 364,422 votes this summer.

Another 31 assembly seats across 10 states -- Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Kerala -- will go to the polls. Out of these, the highest number of seats, seven, are in Rajasthan, where the BJP will look to reverse the setback of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

These round of elections -- alongside high-voltage contests on November 20 in Maharashtra and the second phase of Jharkhand -- are important because they will determine the momentum of national politics. The BJP suffered some setbacks in these regions during the Lok Sabha polls but regained momentum with its unexpected victory in the Haryana polls, when it beat the Congress, defying exit poll predictions.

A good showing in these polls will likely embolden the party nationally, boost its plans to usher in big-bang reforms, and puncture the Opposition’s narrative that the Lok Sabha polls, which saw the BJP fail to secure a majority on its own, had robbed the NDA of a decisive mandate. The Opposition will look to repeat its showing in the Lok Sabha elections, where it swept the tribal regions

A total of 683 candidates are in the fray for the first leg of the two-phase poll contest in Jharkhand, which is poised as a bipolar battle between the state’s ruling INDIA bloc led by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Former CM Champai Soren who switched to the BJP from JMM, JMM’s Deepak Birua, and Congress’s Rameshwar Oraon are among the key candidates in the first phase.

In these seats in 2019, the JMM-Congress alliance won 25 constituencies and the BJP 13 . In the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year, the JMM-Congress alliance won five of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in the region, and the BJP won eight.

The contest in the mineral-rich state, which also boasts of the second-highest proportion of tribespeople in India, is likely to have deep reverberations.

Tribal identity was a key poll plank, with the BJP accusing the JMM government of allowing illegal infiltration from Bangladesh and hurting tribal rights. In its election manifesto, the BJP sought to balance the anti-infiltration plank and tribal outreach, saying that it will implement the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in the state if it wins but assured that tribal people will be kept out of its ambit.

“No one can stop implementation of the Uniform Civil Code aimed at preventing infiltration in Jharkhand, and tribals will be kept out of its ambit,” Union home minister Amit Shah said on Tuesday during a rally in Baghmara, which will vote in the second phase on November 20.

The ruling coalition accused the BJP of fanning communal tension as it focused on social welfare policies. In its manifesto, the JMM highlighted nine key areas, including agriculture and education, and made a slew of promises, such as 33% reservation for women in state government jobs.

“We are set to get bigger mandate than 2019. We will win at least 38 of the 43 seats in first phase,” said JMM general secretary Supriyo Bhattacharya. 

JMM ally Congress unveiled its manifesto on Tuesday, promising 250 units of free electricity, a caste-based census, and filling up of all vacant government posts within a year. “I have said it before and I am repeating it -- INDIA (bloc) will give more money to women, youth, farmers and poor to meet their needs than what the BJP has given to its billionaire friends,” Congress’s Rahul Gandhi posted on X.

The second phase of the polls will be held on November 20 and the votes will be counted on November 23.

In 2019, the JMM-led alliance won the state with 47 seats. The BJP bagged 25 seats. The coalition swept the tribal seats in the elections, winning 26 of the 28 ST-reserved constituencies, while the BJP won the remaining two seats, down from the 11 it won in 2014. In the 2024 general elections, the BJP won eight of the 14 Lok Sabha seats, with the JMM winning three and the Congress two. The BJP’s long-term ally All Jharkhand Students Union won the remaining seat.

In Wayanad, Priyanka is looking to hold onto the party stronghold. During the nearly month-long, high-voltage campaign, Priyanka has relied heavily on her brother’s tenure as Wayanad MP and his popularity in the constituency to boost her prospects, frequently highlighting the “love and affection” he has for the people of Wayanad and how they supported him during challenging times. Her rivals have raised the Congress leaders lack of electoral experience and labelled her as an outsider in a bid to discourage voters from choosing her.

The clutch of bypolls that will be held across the country are unlikely to have any bearing on the stability of different governments. However, t they will play a critical role in gauging the balance of power in states as issues of local governance and law and order situation are likely to play a key role in deciding whom the voters choose.

Maharashtra, which sends the second-highest number of parliamentarians to the Lok Sabha will see a head-on battle between two mega alliances – the ruling Mahayuti, comprising the BJP, the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party, and the Maha Vikas Aghadi, comprising the Congress, the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar). Also in the fray are a litany of smaller outfits such as the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen and the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi. The polls will also hold high stakes for two regional outfits – the Sena and the NCP – that suffered vertical splits in the last three years and will vie for the same chunk of the electorate. The legacy of the Thackeray family and the Pawar family will, once again, be among the decisive issues in these polls.