Hemant Soren will again take oath as Chief Minister of Jharkhand, after leading the INDIA block to a historic assembly election victory.

These factors explain why the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha-led INDIA bloc won 56 seats, retaining power in the 81-member Assembly. 

Credit goes to Chief Minister Hemant Soren and his wife Kalpana who together not only led the party against all odds of corruption charges and crisis within the family created by their own sister-in-law Sita Soren and senior leader Champai Doren who quit JMM and joined BJP, but also encouraged and mobilised supporters across the state by their fiery welfare schemes and speeches and slogans.

“BJP is a snake, kill it”; “ BJP is a party of businessmen and land grabbers”; “ Jharkhand is created by us( JMM), we will build it”. These slogans countered BJP’s “ Batoge To Katoge” slogan and Bangladeshi infiltrators issue. 

No wonder why the JMM ruling alliance has improved its 2019 score. The INDIA bloc allies in Jharkhand include the JMM, the Congress, the CPI(ML)L, and the RJD. The NDA includes the BJP, the AJSUP, the JD(U), and the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas). The JMM has won 34 seats. 

The Congress won 16 seats, according to Election Commission data. The RJD won four seats. In the NDA, the BJP won 21 seats, and the AJSU and LJP won one seat each. The Janata Dal United is ahead in one seat. The Maiya Yojana, its cash transfer scheme for women, is being widely credited as a game-changer. 

Consolidation of the OBC vote and pro-Hindutva vote have acted as a force multiplier. Three factors explain the JMM’s big victory – it is the biggest ever in the state’s history – in these elections: complete consolidation of its core constituency among Scheduled Tribe (ST) voters, better outreach among non-ST voters with a wider alliance, identity agnostic welfare schemes, and some external help from a nativist party making its debut which hurt the BJP alliance far more than the JMM alliance. 

Let us take the 28 ST reserved assembly constituencies. The JMM-led alliance has won 27 of them this time. This is the third time in a row the JMM alliance has increased its seat count in the ST-reserved ACs at the cost of the BJP. 

Because, the JMM-led alliance had pretty much all of the ST-reserved ACs in 2019 as well, a better measure of its growing dominance in the ST-reserved ACs is its vote share which has increased from 43% to 51% between 2019 and 2024. 

Another major factor for the JMM winning all the ST ACs would not have given the JMM a majority in the state. This is exactly what happened in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The JMM-led alliance won all five of the ST reserved parliamentary constituencies (PCs) but the BJP-led alliance won the remaining nine PCs. 

This is why the real story of these elections is the JMM alliance’s performance in the remaining 53 ACs. 

Not only has the alliance won a 55% seat share in these ACs, but it is for the first time that the JMM has won more non-ST reserved ACs than the BJP in the state’s history. Clearly, the allies also played their role. Both the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) have improved their strike rates compared to the 2019 assembly elections. 

The new entrant to the alliance, the Communist Party of India Marxist Leninist Liberation or CPI ML also won two of the four ACs it contested. Both of them had gone to the BJP in the last election. While it is difficult to provide statistics, the cash transfer scheme Maiya Samman Yojna must have played a part in this wider appeal of the JMM among non-ST voters who would have been more concerned about tangible gains than questions of identity or dignity. 

Yet another factor is this. It is the tailwind from a disruptor( Vote Katwa) in these elections. The Jharkhand Loktantrik Krantikari Morcha (JLKM) made its debut in these elections and contested 68 ACs. 

The JLKM was founded by Jairam Kumar Mahato, who is primarily interested in mobilising the Mahato (Kurmi) voters in the North Chotanagpur sub-region of the state. 

While Jharkhand does not have caste-wise demographic data, Mahatos are believed to be a politically important demography in these parts. 

The JLKM has managed to win just one AC, but it played a spoiler in 14 ACs. A seat is considered to be lost to other parties playing spoiler if the party finishing third has more vote share than the victory margin. Of the 17 seats the BJP alliance has lost to spoilers, the JLKM was the spoiling party in 11.