REVENGE OF THE TRIBALS

The NDA may have lost all goodwill among the state's 26 per cent tribals due to ED action against ex-CM Hemant Soren

- Amitabh Srivastava

Did Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader and former Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren’s being in custody in an alleged land scam case result in sympathy voting for his party in the just-concluded Lok Sabha election? Yes and no. While the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won nine out of Jharkhand’s 14 Lok Sabha seats, it lost all five seats reserved for the Scheduled Tribes (STs) in the state, bringing its tally down by three from the 12 seats it had won in the previous election in 2019. The JMM and its allies have projected Hemant’s arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in January as an example of the anti-tribal stance of the ruling BJP at the Centre. On June 4, while the JMM picked three of the ST seats, two were won by ally Congress.