Barring Congress’s Kumar, all party presidents in fray for Lok Sabha polls

RANCHI: Barring Congress, presidents and state presidents of all front-running political parties in

Jharkhand

will be in the fray in this year’s parliamentary election.

JMM president Shibu Soren will be contesting from Dumka, where he is the sitting MP. The septuagenarian leader, an eight-time MP since 1980, will be in fray for the 12th time.

Though Soren’s name has not been officially announced by the party, his JVM-P counterpart Babulal Marandi will also contest the polls. A three-time MP from Koderma, Marandi will contest the general elections from the same where he won thrice after the state was formed in 2000. In the 2014 polls, he lost to BJP’s Ravindra Kumar Rai, who had resigned from BJP along with Marandi in 2006 to form JVM-P. Rai later returned to BJP.

BJP’s Jharkhand president Laxman Gilua will be seeking a second consecutive term as MP in this year’s polls. The saffron party, which is confident of winning all 14 parliamentary seats in the state, has already nominated Gilua from Singhbhum seat in Kolhan division, where he is the sitting MP. Gilua, who will be up against Congress candidate Geeta Koda, became an MP for the first time in 1999.

However, state Congress president Ajoy Kumar is the sole exception. Kumar, an ex-IPS officer, was Congress’s pick for

Jamshedpur

seat, where he won on a JVM-P ticket in the 2011 parliamentary by-election. However, with the seat going to the kitty of its mahagathbandhan ally JMM, Kumar has told senior party leaders he will not contest this time.

Kumar contested the by-election to the Jamshedpur parliamentary seat after it was vacated by BJP MP Arjun Munda after he took over as Jharkhand CM. Kumar, who was posted as the Jamshedpur SP in his service years, sprang up a surprise by defeating BJP’s Dineshanand Goswami by more than 1.5 lakh votes.

Asked if he will be up against one of BJP’s two sitting MLAs from Jamshedpur — chief minister Raghubar Das and food and civil supplies minister Saryu Rai — in the assembly polls, Kumar said: “We will see. There is a lot of time.” The assembly election is scheduled to take place in the end of this year.

Meanwhile, JMM working president Hemant Soren on Tuesday flew to New Delhi to attend a meeting of UPA allies. JMM leaders in Ranchi said the meeting will also focus on chalking out joint campaigning strategies and finalising the names of mahagathbandhan candidates.