In 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) registered its biggest ever victory in Jharkhand, winning 12 out of the 14 seats in the state. The BJP polled 40.7% of the total votes polled, 16.1 percentage points more than what the alliance of Congress, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) could manage.
Jharkhand also had assembly elections in November and December 2014. Despite having swept the state in the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP formed an alliance with the All Jharkhand Students’ Union Party (AJSUP) and won 42 out of the 81 seats in the assembly. Raghubar Das became the first non-tribal chief minister in Jharkhand after the NDA’s election victory.
While the BJP entered an alliance despite having won the Lok Sabha, the two main opposition parties, JMM and Congress, parted ways. The JMM put up candidates in 79 assembly seats, and the Congress forged a 62-19 seat alliance with the RJD. The combined vote share of the JMM and the Congress-RJD alliance was 34.6%, pretty close to the NDA figure of 35.5%.
The opposition seems to have learnt its lessons from the 2014 debacle in the battle for 2019. Jharkhand is probably the only state where the BJP is pitted against a grand alliance. Not only have the Congress, JMM and the RJD joined hands once again, they have also extended their alliance to include the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (JVM), which has a significant vote share in the state. The combined vote share of the opposition alliance comprising the Congress, JMM, RJD and the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (JVM) was 36.9% and 44.8% in the 2014 Lok Sabha and assembly elections. If the votes of these four parties were aggregated at the parliamentary constituency (PC) level, and compared to the vote share of the BJP and the AJSUP, the BJP’s tally in 2014 Lok Sabha would have come down to nine instead of 12. An extrapolation of 2014 assembly results shows that the combined vote share of these four parties was more than that of the NDA in 11 PCs.
To be sure, there is no guarantee that an electoral alliance of so many parties will be able to ensure perfect transfer of votes in different constituencies. At the same time, there is no guarantee that the BJP would retain its 2014 vote shares that could have been an effect of the Narendra Modi wave. Anecdotal accounts also suggest that there could be significant tribal discontent against the BJP’s state government. The exact impact of these factors will only be known on May 23, but it can be said that the BJP’s main challenge in Jharkhand will to be cut its losses as much as possible
| Constituency | Sitting MP |
| Madhya Pradesh | |
|---|---|
| Balaghat | Bodhsingh Bhagat, BJP |
| Chhindwara | Kamal Nath, Congress |
| Jabalpur | Rakesh Singh, BJP |
| Mandla | Faggan Singh Kulaste, BJP |
| Shahdol | Gyan Singh, BJP |
| Sidhi | Riti Pathak, BJP |
| Rajasthan | |
| Ajmer | Raghu Sharma, Congress |
| Banswara | Manshankar Nimana, BJP |
| Barmer | Sona Ram Choudhary, BJP |
| Bhilwara | Subhash Baheria, BJP |
| Chhittorgarh | Chandra Prakash Joshi, BJP |
| Jalore | Devji Patel, BJP |
| Jhalawar-Baran | Dushyant Singh, BJP |
| Jodhpur | Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, BJP |
| Kota | Om Birla, BJP |
| Pali | P P Choudhary, BJP |
| Rajsamand | Hariom Singh Rathore, BJP |
| Tonk-Sawai Madhopur | Sukhbir Singh Jaunapuria, BJP |
| Udaipur | Arjunlal Meena, BJP |
| Jammu and Kashmir | |
| Anantnag | Vacant |
| Maharashtra | |
| Bhiwandi | Kapil Moreshwar Patil, BJP |
| Dhule | Dr. Bhamre Subhash Ramrao, BJP |
| Dindori | Chavan Harishchandra Devram, BJP |
| Kalyan | Dr.Shrikant Eknath Shinde, Shiv Sena |
| Mumbai North | Gopal Chinayya Shetty, BJP |
| Mumbai North West | Gajanan Chandrakant Kirtikar, Shiv Sena |
| Mumbai North East | Kirit Somaiya, BJP |
| Mumbai North Central | Poonam Mahajan, BJP |
| Mumbai South Central | Rahul Ramesh Shewale, Shiv Sena |
| Mumbai South | Arvind Ganpat Sawant, Shiv Sena |
| Maval | Shrirang Chandu Barne, Shiv Sena |
| Nandurbar | Dr Heena Gavit, BJP |
| Nashik | Godse Hemant Tukaram, Shiv Sena |
| Palghar | Rajendra Gavit, BJP |
| Shirdi | Lokhande Sadashiv Kisan, Shiv Sena |
| Shirur | Adhalrao Shivaji Dattatrey, Shiv Sena |
| Thane | Vichare Rajan Baburao, Shiv Sena |
| Constituency | Sitting MP |
| Uttar Pradesh | |
|---|---|
| Akbarpur | Devendra Singh Bhole, BJP |
| Etawah | Ashok Kumar Doharey, BJP |
| Farrukhabad | Mukesh Rajput, BJP |
| Hamirpur | Kunwar Pushpendra Singh Chandel, BJP |
| Hardoi | Anshul Verma, BJP |
| Jalaun | Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma, BJP |
| Jhansi | Uma Bharti, BJP |
| Kannauj | Dimple Yadav, SP |
| Kanpur | Murli Manohar Joshi, BJP |
| Kheri | Ajay Kumar, BJP |
| Misrikh | Anju Bala, BJP |
| Shahjahanpur | Krishna Raj, BJP |
| Unnao | Sakshi Maharaj, BJP |
| Jharkhand | |
| Chatra | Sunil Kumar Singh, BJP |
| Palamu | Vishnu Dayal Ram, BJP |
| Lohardaga | Sudarshan Bhagat, BJP |
| Odisha | |
| Balasore | Rabindra Kumar Jena, BJD |
| Bhadrak | Arjun Charan Sethi, BJD |
| Jagatsinghpur | Kulamani Samal, BJD |
| Jajpur | Rita Tarai, BJD |
| Kendrapara | Baijayant Panda, BJD (now in BJP) |
| Mayurbhang | Rama Chandra Hansdah, BJD |
| West Bengal | |
| Asansol | Babul Supriyo, BJP |
| Baharampur | Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Congress |
| Bardhman Purba | Sunil Kumar Mondal, Trinamool Congress |
| Bolpur | Anupam Hazra, Trinamool Congress |
| Birbhum | Shatabdi Roy, Trinamool Congress |
| Burdwan-Durgapur | Mamtaz Sanghamita, Trinamool Congress |
| Krishnanagar | Tapas Paul, Trinamool |
| Ranaghat | Tapas Mandal, Trinamool |
| Bihar | |
| Begusarai | Dr. Bhola Singh, BJP |
| Darbhanga | Kirti Azad, BJP |
| Munger | Veena Devi, LJP |
| Samastipur | Ram Chandra Paswan, LJP |
| Ujiarpur | Nityanand Rai, BJP |
First Published: Apr 29, 2019 07:10 IST
