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Phase Seven: End Game, Part Two...

Explore the intricate dynamics of phase seven polling today. This comprehensive analysis delves into regional politics, voter sentiments, and the potential outcomes in states like Jharkhand, Punjab, Bihar, West Bengal, and Odisha.

By Prem Panicker
New Update
Phase Seven - Kalpana Soren

Phase Seven: End Game, Part Two... | Kalpana Soren, Photo courtesy: Social media

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Phase Seven: End Game, Part Two...

WHEN the history of the 2024 election is written (and it should be, preferably by a collective capable of speaking and understanding regional languages), Kalpana Soren deserves a special chapter all to herself.

Of the 14 seats the state has to offer, the NDA in 2019 won 12 (BJP 11, and ally AJSU 1) and reduced Shibu Soren’s JMM to just one seat (Rajmahal), with its ally the Congress winning the other (Singhbhum).

If in the ongoing election the BJP appears likely to lose at least half of its tally, much of the credit should go to Soren, wife of the jailed former Chief Minister Hemant Soren.

In the run-up to Hemant Soren's arrest on 31 January, BJP MP from Godda Nishikant Dubey led a parade of leaders spreading the story that there was a vicious succession fight within the Soren household. The majority of JMM MLAs were opposed to Kalpana and wanted Hemant Soren’s brother Basant as CM, Dubey and others said. Reports also suggested that elder Sohen bahu Sita Soren, wife of Hemant's late elder brother Durga, was also challenging for the CM’s post.

It didn’t quite work out that way. On 2 February Champai Soren, one of the most prominent figures in the movement for the creation of the separate state of Jharkhand, was sworn in as CM. A disappointed Sita Soren broke ranks, joined the BJP in mid-March, and was given a ticket from Dhumka, where her JMM opponent is Nalin Soren, a seven time MLA making his first bid for Parliament. And Kalpana Soren emerged as the star campaigner not just for her husband’s party but for the Opposition alliance.

Her coming out party was on 4 March, JMM’s Foundation Day. She began with a reference to her in-laws and then to her incarcerated husband – and broke down in tears.

“She wasn’t sure of her reception by the party workers,” a local journalist told me of that day.

What could have been a train wreck was rescued by her party workers, who broke out into a fierce chant: Jail ka taala tootega, Hemant Soren chootega.

With that wind beneath her wings, Kalpana Soren took off – and since then, has proved so effective that not only is she the most effective campaigner among all parties in Jharkhand, the Opposition also roped her in for rallies in Mumbai and in Delhi.

Reciprocally, Opposition leaders campaigned extensively in the Gandey assembly constituency by-election, where Kalpana Soren is contesting against Dilip Kumar Verma of the BJP, backed by the All Jharkhand Students Union. The seat polled on May 20, during the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha election, and she is widely expected to win - tribals and Muslims make up close to 42% of the electorate; that constituency is solidly behind her, buttressed by overwhelming support among women.

Sympathy can only get you so far in a national campaign, though. What makes this daughter of an army officer effective is her nuanced connect with local issues. Of these, unemployment is the most pressing, as it is throughout the country. Jharkhand ranks on top of the list of states with the highest out-migration with an estimated six lakh, mostly men, having left the state in search of work elsewhere.

The problem is so acute that it prompted the state government to launch a project to document out-migration and to understand the issues in depth. The Jharkhand Migration Survey 2023 was launched in January 2023 and completed in August. (For those interested, a research paper collates the findings).

One of the consequences is that women voters outnumber men by a distance The state’s chief electoral officer K. Ravi Kumar, concerned by the depressed voter turnout among men, had launched an all-out effort to try and get the state’s migrants back home to vote, but with little success. Meanwhile women have been showing up in ever larger numbers at JMM rallies. (The BJP might have done itself a disservice by jailing Hemant Soren and paving the way for his wife to take charge of the campaign).

The last three of the state’s 14 seats poll today, 1 June. Of these, Rajmahal is the only seat the JMM held in the 17th Lok Sabha and its candidate, Vijay Kumar Hansdak, is seeking a third term. In 2019, Dumka was the only competitive seat from this lot, with Sunil Soren of the BJP winning by a 4.64% margin

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