Jharkhand Election 2024: Focus On Nine Seats With Close Margins; BJP, JMM Eye Booster Shot

Jharkhand Vidhansabha Chunav 2024: With the first phase of the Jharkhand assembly elections only a fortnight away, the political parties have upped their campaigning and efforts to woo the voters. Of the 81-member assembly seat, certain seats have witnessed a close encounter while some have been strongholds of either the BJP or the Congress. With 42 seats being the majority mark, the BJP and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) are working to gain an upper hand on seats which have traditionally witnessed a close contest. 

These nine seats are Kodarma, Mandhu, Baghmara, Jarmundi, Deoghar, Godda, Simdega, Nala, and Jama. In the 2019 assembly elections, the BJP had won five and the two seats each went to the JMM and the Congress. However, the Jharkhand Lok Sabha poll result gave an edge to the BJP-All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU) alliance a lead in eight of these nine seats.

The election to these seats has also become crucial because the voters are all set to witness a united fight between two blocs - NDA and INDIA. While AJSU, JDU, BJP and LJP are part of the NDA, Congress, JMM, RJD and Left constitute the INDIA bloc.

In the 2019 assembly elections, the lowest victory margin in these nine seats was in Simdega where Bhushan Bara of Congress defeated Shradhanand Besra of the BJP by 285 votes. In Baghmera, the BJP narrowly edged out the Congress by 824 votes. In the constituencies it didn’t win, the BJP secured the second position in four of them. The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), a partner of the JMM and Congress, was the runner-up in three constituencies, while the Congress and the AJSU each took second place in one constituency. Among the closely contested seats that the BJP managed to flip in 2019, it had placed as runner-up in three of them five years prior. This included Torpa, where the party narrowly lost to the JMM by just 43 votes.

The assembly polls in Jharkhand will take place in two phases - the first phase on November 13 and the second phase on November 20. The counting of votes will take place on November 23.