Elections are to be held for the fifth assembly in Jharkhand. The nomination process is in the final stages. Elections will be held here in 2 phases. The first phase of voting is on November 13, and the election campaign for it has gained momentum. Whereas the nomination process for voting to be held on 20th November will be completed on 1st November. The electoral history here is about 20 years old. This 24 year old state has become witness to many political movements.
Actually, Jharkhand came into existence as a new state on the map of the country on 15 November 2000. But elections for the first assembly were held here in February 2005. The very first election here became special in many ways. A total of 50 parties took part in the elections including 6 national parties namely Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party, CPI, CPI-M and Nationalist Congress Party. In this election, Chandankiyari seat of Bokaro district came into limelight because the deposits of all the candidates who contested were confiscated.
Competition between 30 candidates
There are 4 assembly seats under Bokaro district. In this, Chandankiyari assembly seat is reserved for Scheduled Caste. Elections were held on this seat for the first time. A total of 32 candidates had filed nominations for this seat for the elections, but the nominations of 2 were cancelled. In such a situation, there was competition among only 30 candidates including 2 women left in the field. The victory went in favor of Haru Rajwar of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha.
However, the special thing about the election results here was that the deposits of all 32 candidates including the candidate who won the elections were forfeited. The candidates contesting in Chandankiyari needed at least 18,179 votes to save their deposits. But not a single candidate could come even close to it.
4 candidates got more than 12 thousand votes
There were a total of 1,94,752 voters in Chandankiyari Assembly seat reserved for Scheduled Caste, in which 56 percent i.e. 1,09,069 voters cast their votes. The competition was fierce. In a tight contest, Haru Rajwar of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) got the maximum votes.
Haru Rajwar got only 17,823 votes out of the total votes cast, which was much less than the votes required to save the bail. His nearest rival Umakant Rajak of All Jharkhand Students Union got 13,706 votes. Two other candidates got more than 12 thousand votes each.
20 out of 32 got more than one thousand votes
The main reason for the forfeiture of the deposits of all the candidates was that 20 out of 32 candidates had received more than one thousand votes each. Despite losing the deposit, Haru Rajwar was declared the winner because he got the most votes. Rajwar won this election by a margin of 4,117 votes. Haru had won from here for the second consecutive time.
In the year 2000, in the elections held here for Bihar Assembly, Haru had won on JMM ticket by a margin of 19,710 votes. However, he was defeated from here in 1995. The victory in 2005 was the last victory for Haru. After victory in 2005, he left JMM and joined Janata Dal United (JDU). He was defeated on JDU ticket in 2009. In 2014, he again joined JMM but could not rise above third position.
