With the BJP securing clear majority in Jharkhand the question arises is who will be the next Chief Minister of the tribal State? The Parliamentary board of the party is scheduled to meet on Wednesday to discuss the name but speculations have been rife in the political corridor of the State. Earlier, the BJP leaders have been saying that Jharkhand this time may have a non-tribal Chief Minister and there could be a Haryana-like surprise in Jharkhand too. Amid several names popping up one of them is Arjun Munda, a former Chief Minister who has lost the poll from Kharsawan assembly constituency.
The other names doing the round are Raghuvar Das, Sudarshan Bhagat, Saryu Rai, Sunil Singh and Ganesh Mishra.
Sources in the party told The Hindu that names of Ganesh Mishra who is close to the RSS and BJP top leadership might be the dark horse like Manoharlal Khattar of Haryana.
Among the non-tribal face the BJP leader Saryu Rai who won the poll from Jamshedpur (east) and Sunil Singh, party MP from Chatra too could come up as surprise candidates for the chief minister’s post.
Both Mr. Saryu Rai and Mr. Sunil Singh are considered close to the RSS and top BJP leadership with their political insight and understanding.
“Mr. Rai even could handle both the party and the corporate pressure with equal ease,” said a party source.
While on the other hand party leader and former Deputy Chief Minister in 2010 Raghuvar Das who too won the poll from Jamshedpur (west) is in the race for the post. “I’ll always be the Das for the people of Jharkhand but who will don the mantle is being decided by the party’s Parliamentary board,” said Mr. Das.
RJD, JD(U) draw blank
The Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Janata Dal (United) failed to open their account in the election. “The BJP failed to get the number of seats it had projected. The other parties failed to get a good result for division of votes,” JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar said.
 | >Jharkhand gives clear verdictMany political stalwarts, even former Chief Ministers, lost the election, in what political observers see as a shift from the politics of the past that has seen unstable regimes, five Chief Ministers and intermittent periods of President’s rule since the State was formed 14 years ago >Read More... |
>A vote for stability in Jharkhand?Was it “Modi magic,” the party’s campaign management or polarisation between tribal and other votes that helped it click? Or have the people decided to vote in a stable government, fed up with the corruption and instability that marked the 14 years since the birth of the State? >Read More... | |
| > Challenge to BJP came from regional partiesA close look at the poll percentages also reveals that in Jharkhand if the Congress had not broken up with the JMM, the combine would have secured (10.3% plus 20.5%), virtually equalling the BJP’s 31.4 %. Indeed, the Congress’s Subodh Kant Sahay on Tuesday expressed regret that the alliance had broken. >Read More... |
