Ranchi: Learning a lesson from the tough contest it faced in the Dumka assembly bypolls last month, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) has already begun planning for the upcoming byelection to the Madhupur assembly seat in Deoghar early next year.
The seat fell vacant on October 3 when incumbent legislator Haji Hussain Ansari, also the state minister for minority affairs, died of a cardiac arrest at a Ranchi hospital hours after recovering from Covid. As per Constitutional mandate, Madhupur’s voters will have to elect their next representative to the assembly by March next.
“Preparations have already begun after Haji Sahab’s chaalisa (a 40-day mourning period). We have huddled our Karyakartas in the district, block and booth levels and directed them to strengthen our booth committees and increase public contact,” Narsingh Murmu, Deoghar district president of JMM, told TOI.
Ansari, a JMM stalwart, represented Madhupur four times since 1995. In 2014, he lost to BJP’s Raj Paliwar. Paliwar went on to become the labour minister in the cabinet of former CM Raghubar Das. In 2019, Ansari returned to Jharkhand Vidhan Sabha after beating Paliwar by a little over 23,000 votes.
While the buzz within the BJP is that Paliwar, a two-time MLA from Madhupur, will be handed over thelection ticket again, JMM rank and file indicated that Haji’s son Hafizul Hassan is the frontrunner as candidate.
JMM is drawing lessons from Dumka, where Basant, also a debutant in electoral politics, locked horns with BJP candidate and former social welfare minister Lois Marandi. Though Basant won, his victory margin was a little over 6,000 votes. Eleven months ago, Basant’s elder brother and incumbent CM Hemant Soren had defeated Marandi by 13,188 votes.
“Madhupur is important for us. Not only it is our sitting seat, but we have Haji Sahab’s legacy to preserve. Preparations have begun already as we have a few months left for bye-polls. Senior leadership is likely to take stock of the ground scenario in Madhupur very soon,” Vinod Kumar Pandey, JMM’s central committee member cum spokesperson, told TOI on Monday.