Jharkhand: The tribal state’s political ‘chess game’

Jharkhand will vote for the second and final phase of elections to the 81-member assembly on Wednesday in what has been one of the most hotly contested polls in the state’s electoral politics.

Barely 24 years old, Jharkhand has already seen 13 chief ministers in a virtual game of musical chairs involving six leaders from the two main political players – the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and the BJP. Along with these leaders from the two political parties was also a rare ‘independent’ CM Madhu Koda who remained in the post for almost two years.

In between, there were also three phases of President’s rule in the state, known for its mineral-rich land and a large number of ‘poor’ population, mostly tribal people.

Politics in ‘poor rich state’

More than 39 percent of Jharkhand’s population, the majority of whom are tribals, live below the poverty line. There are about 33 scheduled tribes in the state, according to the Ministry of Tribal Affairs.

According to the 2011 census, the number of STs was 86,45,042 out of the total population of 3,29,88,134 in the state – which is 26.42 percent and 8.3 percent of the total ST population in the country.

At 14.7 percent, Madhya Pradesh has the highest proportion of ST population in the country followed by Maharashtra (10.1%), Odisha (9.2%), Rajasthan (8.8%) and Gujarat (8.5%) .

In these elections, the BJP made “Bangladeshi Muslim/Rohingya infiltration into tribal areas” the central theme of its campaign.

Notably, five of the 13 Lok Sabha seats that the BJP lost in 2024 in Jharkhand were all ST-dominated. Addressing “infiltration issues” also appears to be aimed at eroding rival JMM-Congress-RJD key support base. As many as six of the seven leaders who occupied the Jharkhand CMO have been tribals.

Jharkhand and its seven CMs

BJP’s Raghubar Das, the only Chief Minister to complete an unbroken five years in the chair, was also the only non-tribal CM.

The other six has had a stint of between 10 days (JMM’s Shibu Soren) to four years and 35 days with Hemant Soren before he was arrested in an alleged land scam case.

Hemant Søren, who has completed about 137 days in office after his release, is the sitting CM.

His father Shibu Soren, who is counted among senior leaders of the movement for a tribal state, occupied the seat three times. However, his first term in March 2005 ended in just 10 days after he failed to prove a majority.

Jharkhand’s journey in 2000 started with the BJP’s Babulal Marandi, a tribal leader with roots in the RSS. Marandi was succeeded by BJP’s Arjun Munda, who is technically the longest serving CM with tenures spanning three terms. But unlike Das, he never completed a five-year term.

JMM’s three CMs also include Champai Soren, who served as a cabinet minister in the second Hemant Soren government from 2019 to 2024. Now with the BJP, Champai was made the CM of JMM after Hemant Soren was arrested.

Vananchal to Jharkhand

Reports suggest that the seed for the tribal state of Jharkhand was sown before India’s independence, though it came to fruition in 2000.

In 1928, a separate state was demanded by the Unnati Samaj, the political wing of the Christian Tribals Association, which also submitted a memorandum to the Simon Commission to form a tribal state in eastern India.

In the 1952 elections, Jaipal Singh Munda’s Jharkhand Party won three Lok Sabha seats and 32 Bihar Assembly seats. However, the Jharkhand party’s memorandum to the State Reorganization Commission for a separate state was rejected.

In 1999, the BJP promised to form a separate ‘Vananchal’ if elected.

On 15 November 2000, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government created three new states – Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh – fulfilling long-standing regional demands. Consisting of 18 districts from south Bihar, Jharkahnd was inaugurated on the birthday of the tribal leader Birsa Munda.

However, it also spelled the collapse of the 55-year-old movement as “the decision was also a rejection of the demand of the people of Bihar’s tribal heartland for a Jharkhand state comprising 27 districts of Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh,” experts say.

Originally called ‘Vananchal’, the name was later changed to Jharkhand.

2024 polls

BJP and JMM have been the two dominant players in state politics.

In 1998, the BJP won 12 of the 14 Jharkhand seats in the Lok Sabha. However, factionalism between Marandi and Arjun Munda, a former JMM leader who had joined the BJP, and challenges from the JMM, RJD and the Congress led to disunity and weakening.

The rise of Narendra Modi and the return of the BJP-led NDA at the Center in 2014 saw the saffron party gain power in the state and give its first non-tribal CM Raghubar Das. However, a non-tribal CM was also said to be the reason why the JMM Congress swept the state and tribal Hemant Soren back as CM in the subsequent elections.

In 2024, Babulal Marandi, whose JVM-P contested various elections in Jharkhand till 2019, is back as BJP president and face.

Can BJP bounce back?

The BJP believes it had enough ammunition to counter the multi-party JMM-Congress-RJD ‘mahagathbandhan’ led by Hemant Soren, a leading tribal face in his own right, in the 2024 assembly elections.

The focus has been on “illegal immigrants from Bangladesh who allegedly marry tribal women to access land, establish families and secure positions of influence in local governance in the tribal-dominated region” and alleged demographic shift in the state.

Tribal-dominated Jharkhand hosts 8.3 percent of the country’s total Scheduled Tribe population.

But whether the demographic composition is really affected and whether there is a correlation between infiltration and declining number of STs in Jharkhand; the poll results will answer that question.