NEW DELHI: JMM doesn’t expect Congress to perform well in the Assembly elections, because of which it has put forth the demand for more seats in the alliance.
Congress party and its ruling alliance partner Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) are entangled in a standoff over seat sharing before the crucial Assembly elections. JMM leadership thinks Congress could perform poorly, therefore pressing it to seek more seats in the ruling alliance.
Hemant Soren’s concern, according to JMM insiders, is that the current Congress leadership general secretary in charge Ghulam Ahmed Mir and state unit president Rajesh Thakur has stunted the progress of Congress. This could subsequently upset the equation of victory margin in terms of seat count. A senior Congress leader corroborated the JMM insiders claim, saying that the grand old party is sitting on only around 6 safe seats as all the other eleven seats (it has currently in the Assembly) may be difficult for the party to retain under the current leadership. Jharkhand has a total of 81 Assembly seats.
The leader, who has worked in most of the constituencies of the state said, “According to our initial assessments, JMM will be able to retain almost all of its seats as they have a certain popularity among tribals, but Congress is lagging, and if they don’t score well, the alliance won’t be able to retain the government. Therefore, the JMM leadership will put all the blame on Congress.”
Congress leaders think that with the current state unit president Rajesh Thakur, there is no possibility of a pushback from Congress to retain its marked out seat share as Soren does not take Thakur seriously. A senior Congress leader said, “If JMM believes that Congress can perform well, then they may give up their claim for extra seats.”
The current circumstances suggest that the party is divided between Congress’ top leaders in Jharkhand and rank and file of the party. The state in charge Ghulam Ahmed Mir, according to top sources, was gradually trapped by Thakur into believing the possibility of earning loads of money through myriad of options if they work in tandem. A Congress leader said, “These two people have great coordination. But there is no coordination with other senior leaders in the party.”
This has brought down the focus on two other top leaders in the state, working president of the state Bandu Tirkey and the ex President of Jharkhand unit and current Lok Sabha Member of Parliament Sukhdev Bhagat, as they are reckoned to be the sincere leaders who have put the interests of the party at the top. A senior leader having worked with all the top leaders in the state said, “Bandu Tirkey is hardworking and Sukhdev Bhagat is an A-class leader in the state. He is well educated and understands the dynamics of the party.
He can take hard-hitting decisions as well and also knows how to keep people together but Congress always brings up people who have poor track record. That is the reason why the party doesn’t perform well even when it is expected to do so.”
A political analyst based in Jharkhand said, “If everything goes right, then the Congress-JMM alliance has an upper hand in the upcoming Assembly elections. But in the recently held Lok Sabha elections, the ticket distribution was very poor which helped the saffron camp trample over candidates easily, as a result Congress could win only two seats. That too, those seats where the candidates (on two tribal seats) had themselves reached out to the people independently, without much organisational support.”