Dumka will reject BJP’s lies & repose faith in JMM candidate: Jharkhand CM

Dumka/Ranchi: JMM and ruling Mahagathbandhan candidate for the Dumka constituency, Basant Soren, filed his nomination papers for the November 3 bypolls on Monday. Kumar Jaimangal, another Mahagathbandhan candidate from Congress for the Bermo seat, will file his papers on Wednesday. BJP candidates, Lois Marandi (Dumka) and Yogeshwar Mahto Batul (Bermo) will do the same on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively.
The Dumka seat fell vacant after Basant’s elder brother and chief minister Hemant Soren, who won from both Dumka and Barhait in the 2019 assembly election, vacated it and retained Barhait soon after the formation of the JMM-RJD-Congress government in January this year.
Basant (42) — who is the president of JMM’s youth wing — first visited Disom Manjhi along with the party’s central committee member, Vijay Singh, in the morning to offer puja and then drove to the returning officer’s (RO) office at the district collectorate to file his papers.
Hemant and his cabinet colleagues — RJD’s Satyanand Bhokta (labour minister), Congress’s Alamgir Alam (rural development minister) and Badal Patralekh (agriculture minister) — visited Dumka along with a host of JMM and Congress members in support of Basant but did not go to the RO’s office to avoid crowding in view of the Covid-19 protocols.
Speaking to reporters at his ancestral home in Khajuria, Hemant said, “Dumka is a matter of prestige for us and we are more than hopeful of our candidate retaining the seat.”
Countering BJP’s recent barbs of spurt in crimes in the state in the last few months, he said, “BJP is an expert in false propaganda but the people of Dumka will not be misled. In the last election, BJP was rejected by the voters and it will witness the same fate in the bypolls too.”
The chief minister seemed unfazed when asked about former chief minister Raghubar Das’s three-day-long campaigning in the tribal heartland since Saturday. “He (Raghubar) used to say JMM will be booted out of Jharkhand in the assembly polls last year but just the opposite happened. I am confident that Basant will win from Dumka,” he said.
This will mark Basant’s electoral debut in any state election. In 2016, he unsuccessfully contested the Rajya Sabha polls as a JMM candidate.
In Bermo, Kumar Jaimangal — whose father represented the seat till his death in May this year — will file his nomination on Wednesday. .
Meanwhile, state BJP president Deepak Prakash said prominent NDA leaders will be present when Marandi and Batul filed their nomination papers. “NDA is totally united this time after the return of Ajsu-Party into our fold. JD(U) and LJP have extended their support as well. During the nomination process, leaders from all like-minded parties will be present. We will set up a joint election team to ensure NDA’s victory this time,” Prakash added.