Jharkhand Assembly election result 2019: Raghubar Das bites the dust, BJP routed

Five years of stable government by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) failed to impress the voters as the party was routed in Jharkhand Assembly election 2019 whose result was declared on Monday. The state is set for a Jharkhand Mukti Morcha-Congress-Rashtriya Janata Dal alliance government led by Hemant Soren. While the final result is yet to be declared but at 9:30 pm, the the winners of 64 seats had been declared with the JMM winning 26, Congress 12 and RJD one. The BJP was left way behind with wins in just 18 seats and was leading in only seven.

Even chief minister and BJP leader Raghubar Das, accused of sidelining other leaders, taking unilateral decision which were against the people and failing to ensure unity in the rank and file, failed tp hold on to his Jamshedpur East Assembly constituency which he had been winning since 1995 when Jharkhand was part of Bihar. Das lost to BJP rebel Saryu Roy who contested as an independent candidate after the party and chief minister sidelined him. Das had the chance to create history by becoming the first leader to ensure a BJP win and come back to power for the second consecutive terms but trends show the party losing across the state.

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Just before the election, BJP's ally All Jharkhand Students Union of Sudesh Mahto broke away following differences over sharing of seats which seems to have hit the party hard. Das faced a tough opponent in Jamshedpur East seat in Roy who had launched a scathing and vicious attack on the former's working style. In 2014 Assembly election Das had won from Jamshedpur East by a massive margin of 70.157 votes but was trailing by over 15,700 against Roy and had already conceded defeat along with submitting his resignation to state governor Draupadi Murmu.

In the 2014 Jharkhand  Assembly election, the BJP won 37 seats but in 2019 the party was knocked out by the combined might ofr JMM-Congress-RJD alliance. BJP has been traditionally strong in urban seats but lost in Jamshedpur East as well as Jamshedpur West. While Roy was leading in the former, the latter was won by Congress' Banna Gupta who defeated BJP's Devendra Nath Singh by a margin of 22,583 votes.

The election also proved to a big individual win for JMM chief Hemant Soren who contested and won from two seats - Barhait and Dumka. Jharkhand Assembly election 2019 was fiercely contested with voting taking place in five rounds from November 30, December 7, 12, 16 and 20.