The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Tuesday announced dates for the Jharkhand assembly elections, which will be held on November 13 and 20 in two phases. The results will be declared on November 23, along with Maharashtra.
| Events | Date |
| Phase 1 voting | November 13 |
| Phase 2 voting | November 20 |
| Results | November 23 |
In the Tribal-dominated state, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and CM Hemant’s Soren Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) are in a direct fight, while the Congress party and Lalu Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) are in alliance with the JMM.
The JMM-Congress-RJD alliance are also reportedly seeking to deal with Left parties, Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party and other tribal outfits that have been contesting the elections in the state as independent entities and make efforts to field candidates against the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on all 81 seats collectively.
In the last assembly polls in 2019, the JMM-Congress-RJD alliance won a comfortable majority of 47 seats in a House of 81.
The BJP slipped to 25 seats from 37 it held in 2014. The poor performance was perceived to be the outcome of its decision to contest alone backfiring. The party did not foster an alliance with the Ajsu in the 2019 polls when Raghubar Das, currently the Odisha governor, was serving the state as CM.
In this year’s Lok Sabha polls in Jharkhand, the BJP-led NDA secured nine out of the 14 seats, with the BJP winning eight and its alliance partner, the Ajsu (All Jharkhand Students Union) Party, retaining its single seat.
On the other hand, the opposition India bloc improved its tally, increasing its seat count from two in 2019 to five in the parliamentary polls.
BJP and JMM have spruced up their pace of campaigning from the ground zero to social media. BJP and JMM leaders are actively rebutting and challenging each other on a range of issues, including illegal immigration, youth welfare, employment and housing.
