The breakdown of all political alliances in Jharkhand displayed in the allies’ competition to win the state’s single vacant Lok Sabha seat of Jamshedpur in an upcoming bypoll reflects an opportunistic abandonment of ideological unity and the resulting confusion among the electorate in the coalition era.
After running a 10-month-old coalition government agonisingly cobbled following a fractured mandate in the Assembly polls and a spell of President’s Rule, three major parties in the ruling alliance — Bharatiya Janata Party, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and AJSU — are vying with one another to grab the Jamshedpur Lok Sabha seat in the bypoll slated for July 1.
After all efforts by chief minister Arjun Munda of the Bharatiya Janata Party to persuade his predecessor and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha chief Shibu Soren to field a joint candidate failed, the comparatively weaker ruling ally AJSU complicated the BJP’s by fielding its own nominee.
Jharkhand’s main Opposition alliance of Congress and JVM(P) of former chief minister Babulal Marandi, who had worked together since the Assembly elections in November 2009, witnessed fissures as both parties put up their own candidates for the Lok Sabha bypoll.
The RJD has announced its support for the Congress. While the Congress has openly accused the JVM(P) of breaking “coalition dharma,” there is silence among the three ruling parties.
The Jamshedpur seat, last held by Mr Munda, fell vacant when he became chief minister in September 2010 and later got elected to the Assembly in the Kharsawan bypoll. With as many as 20 candidates finally in the fray and the former allies engaged in blistering campaigns, all guesses about the bypoll’s likely result have been unprecedentedly clouded.