No One At The Ranch

Deserted by allies and partymen, Jharkhand CM Raghubar Das is fighting a lonely battle to save his crown

- Preetha Nair

Hard facts first. In the 19 years since the state was carved out of Bihar, Jharkhand has never had a single-party government. and the only chief minister to complete a full term is incumbent Raghubar das. and between these two extremes lie the fate of the ruling BJP as the state goes to the polls, in five phases, from November 30. From trying to douse a crippling rebellion within the party and facing a political backlash by angry allies, the BJP appears to be as comfortable as a camel in the arctic. and a string of unexpectedly poor performances in other states—Maharashtra and Haryana—hangs over Jharkhand, known to be one of the most politically fickle states in India.

On November 18, senior BJP leader Saryu Roy filed his nomination papers as an independent candidate against Das from Jamshedpur (East), days after resigning as a minister. The rebel leader, critical of the chief minister for alleged irregularities in the government’s functioning, was apparently peeved at his name not appearing on any of the list of candidates released by the BJP so far. This was the latest in a series of setbacks for the BJP ahead of the polls. Over the past few weeks, the BJP has seen its allies pull away to contest the polls on their own; among them is its longtime ally and coalition partner, the All Jharkhand Students’ Union (AJSU), which was apparently not happy with what the BJP was offering in the seat-sharing talks. The upshot of this is that BJP and AJSU will face each other in more than 15 of the 81 constituencies. Another former ally, the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) is contesting alone in 50 seats while the Janata Dal (United) is also likely to go solo.