How Kalpana Soren is Making Inroads in BJP's Traditional Vote Base in Her Electoral Debut

Gandey (Jharkhand): The area offices of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) are only 50 metres apart in Gandey but their parties’ rivalry is far too bitter. The JMM was born out of militant struggles around issues of justice for the Adivasis and assertion of Jharkhandi identity against Bihar’s feudal practices, while the BJP gradually grew into prominence in the state by pitting Adivasis and Hindu caste groups against Muslims on emotive issues like conversion, beef-eating and other faith-based issues.

The historical political rivalry has once again gained prominence on the back of a high-profile assembly bypoll in Gandey, where former chief minister Hemant Soren’s wife Kalpana Soren is contesting her maiden election. Kalpana, who until recently was a homemaker, stayed away from political life but circumstances after the Enforcement Directorate arrested her husband and former chief minister Hemant Soren forced her to take the plunge.

Back in December, 2023, as rumour of possible arrest of Hemant Soren gathered steam, JMM leader Sarfaraz Ahmed suddenly resigned from his Gandey assembly seat. The BJP’s state leadership made a huge outcry about how his resignation was meant to facilitate Kalpana’s entry into public life. It said that if Hemant is arrested, then Kalpana will replace him as the chief minister and would need to get elected within a period of six months. 

Ahmed was elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha in March 2024. The rumour, too, turned out to be true as Hemant was arrested in an alleged land grab case soon after he resigned. The party leadership decided to anoint Kalpana as his replacement but a rebellion within the Soren family in which her sister-in-law and Jama MLA Sita Soren staked claim to power. 

Champai Soren, one of the most senior JMM leaders and JMM supremo Shibu Soren’s peer, became the consensus candidate amidst the chaos, as the party avoided a cliffhanger scenario during the transfer of power. The JMM-led government was saved, and the Centre, which was looking at a possible situation in Jharkhand to impose President’s Rule, had to back down. 

Months later, Sita Soren is now in the Lok Sabha fray from Dumka as the BJP candidate, after she was expelled from the JMM because of her rebellion. Meanwhile, Kalpana has emerged as an icon of tribal resistance to perceived injustice faced by Adivasis during the Narendra Modi regime.

Having campaigned against her husband’s arrest, which she alleges to be political vendetta, Kalpana has not only taken up Adivasi issues of Jal, Jangal, and Zameen, but has also surfaced as her party’s star campaigner in the absence of Hemant Soren. 

Also read: Left Campaign on Bread-and-Butter Concerns Lights up Electoral Contest in Jharkhand’s Kodarma

However, since Kalpana is an adivasi from Mayurbhanj, Odisha, she could not have chosen Hemant Soren’s seat Barhait, as rules bar her from contesting any reserved seat for Scheduled Tribes in Jharkhand. Ahmed’s Rajya Sabha nomination allowed her to contest from Gandey, an adivasi-Muslim majority seat in Giridih district. 

Her nomination has resulted in a socio-political churn among Gandey’s voters who will get to exercise their franchise on May 20, 2024. She has found support from a cross-section of communities, including those which have been voting traditionally for the BJP.  

At a tea-shop in Gandey, Phool Kushwaha declared her support for Kalpana. “Kalpana has already won. There is no question about it.”

Tripurari Dubey chipped in. “The BJP candidate is an outsider. That has only made our choice easier.”

Phulwa Tiwari, the tea-shop owner, said, “Gandey has a chance to become the chief minister’s constituency.” She added, “It will be a VIP seat, which will mean better education and better health care for all of us.”

All the three claimed that they had voted for BJP in the 2019 assembly polls. 

“We had voted for JMM earlier, we will vote for it again,” Raqeeb, a cycle mechanic in Gandey said.

The Santhal residents of Teesri, a neighboring block which is also home to former BJP chief minister Babulal Marandi, also echoed their preference for Kalpana. 

Surprisingly, a large section of local BJP workers, too, are canvassing for Kalpana. Their reasons are a bit different. They believe that the BJP candidate Dilip Verma was chosen by overriding their preference for local BJP leader and former party president of Giridih district Yadunandan Pathak. 

“Dilip Verma played a crucial role in BJP’s defeat in 2019. He polled over 8,000 votes as a candidate from Babulal Marandi’s Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik). The margin of BJP’s candidate Jai Prakash Verma’s defeat at the hands of Sarfaraz Alam was also around the same,” said Pradip Pathak, former BJP Youth Morcha president in Giridih. 

Also read: Land, Governance, Hemant Soren: Why Jharkhand’s Mundas Decided Against Boycotting the Elections

“Yadunandan Pathak went to jail for protesting against the state government, he organised party events whenever big leaders visited (the constituency), and now the party didn’t even give him a chance to contest. What kind of justice is this?” asked 30-year-old Pradip Mahato, who exited the BJP after Dilip Verma was nominated by the saffron party. 

Babulal Marandi, since the last assembly polls, has merged his party with the BJP, and the former BJP candidate from Gandey Jai Prakash Verma is now in the Lok Sabha’s electoral fray from Kodarma as an independent candidate after being denied a BJP ticket. 

“Kalpana will win by at least a margin of 30,000 votes,” said another former BJP member who was setting out to campaign for her. 

The BJP is clearly in a state of disarray in Gandey, while the JMM has further consolidated its position in the region as the leading opposition player in the INDIA bloc.

Meanwhile, Kalpana, who is an engineering and management graduate from an army household, has been canvassing across the state with three central messages. 

One, Hemant Soren paid the price for not succumbing to BJP’s pressure. Two, Jharkhand is being treated as a stepson as the Modi regime has allegedly diverted the rightful funds for Jharkhand to other BJP-ruled states. And three, her party will fight for a separate code for Sarna religion to “protect tribal identity, culture, and traditions”.