RJD Insists on 13 Seats in Jharkhand

New Delhi: The RJD on Sunday said it will not accept less than 12-13 seats within the INDIA bloc alliance in the Jharkhand Assembly polls. The move comes after JMM chief and Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren declared that the JMM and Congress will contest 70 seats out of 81 seats in the state. RJD leader and Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Jha said: “Anything less than 12-13 seats is not acceptable to us, the RJD has a stronghold in 18-20 seats.” Asked whether the RJD will go solo in the coming polls, he said: “Even if we go solo in Jharkhand, we will support the INDIA bloc candidates in 60-62 seats. Our sole aim is to defeat the BJP. We will not sabotage the INDIA bloc.”

Last time, the RJD contested seven seats and won one. Its MLA Satyanand Bhokta is a minister in the Hemant Soren Cabinet. Mr Jha said the turn of events had “pained” him as his party was not consulted despite the sacrifices it had made during the 2019 elections, when it agreed to contest seven seats.

“We had withdrawn our candidates from several seats despite distributing symbols to them at the instance of our national president (Lalu Prasad Yadav) ... We contested only seven seats and ended as runner-up in five of them with small margins... There have been no corruption charges against our lone minister Satyanand Bhokta here,” he said.

Mr Jha said the RJD played a crucial role in the formation of the INDIA bloc and was also instrumental in making Hemant Soren the chief minister of Jharkhand.

Maintaining that their sentiments were ignored, Mr Jha said a decision on the number of seats the RJD would contest will be made public on Monday as the “party will not allow its boat to sink”. Polling will be held in Jharkhand on November 13 and 20, and the votes will be counted on November 23. Mr Jha said senior RJD leaders, including Leader of the Opposition in Bihar Assembly Tejashwi Yadav, were in Ranchi and held a meeting over the issue.

Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi was in Ranchi last week along with senior party leaders and also met with Jharkhand chief minister and JMM chief Hemant Soren.

In 2019, the JMM-led alliance won 47 seats, snatching power from the BJP in the state. The JMM had won 30 seats, while the Congress bagged 16, apart from the one seat won by the RJD.