Saffron party shines in Raghubar stronghold

Jamshedpur: BJP has fared well in elections to five civic bodies located in chief minister

Raghubar Das

’s home division,

Kolhan

. Out of the five civic bodies, the party has won the chairperson’s post in three municipalities —

Adityapur

Nagar Nigam,

Chakulia

Nagar Panchayat and Seraikela Nagar Panchayat. It also won the deputy chairperson’s post in Adityapur and Chakulia.

JMM

came second after it bagged the posts of chairperson and deputy chaiperson in

Chaibasa Nagar Parshad

and the deputy chairman’s post in Seraikela Nagar Parshad. Congress came a distant third with the lone win of the chairperson’s post in Kapali Nagar Parshad. The major win for the ruling party was in Adityapur where its mayor nominee, Vinod Srivastava, and deputy mayor nominee, Amit Singh alias Bobby Singh, defeated their nearest rival Munna Sharma of Congress and JMM’s Manoj Mahato by 7,950 votes and 10,673 votes.

In the Chakulia Nagar Panchayat, BJP’s Sandhya Rani Sardar won the chairperson’s post defeating JMM’s Sombari Soren by 1,965 votes while Sumit Kumar Lodha of BJP defeated his nearest rival Hari Sadhan Malick of Congress by 1,395 votes.

In Seraikela, BJP’s Meenakshi Patnaik won the chairperson’s post defeating independent candidate Arunima Singhdeo by a narrow margin of 282 votes whereas JMM’s nominee Manoj Chwdhry wrested the vice-chairperson’s post defeating Sidharth Singhdeo of BJP by 147 votes.

In Chaibasa, JMM’s Mithlesh Kumar Thakur and Doma Minz won the chairperson’s post and the deputy chairman’s seat defeating BJP’s Anup Sultania and Vikas Sharma of Congress by 3,739 votes and 179 votes.

Coming as consolation to Congress is its candidate Shoba Rani Mahato, who won the chairperson’s post in Kapali Nagar Parshad defeating JMM candidate Ayesha Rizvi by 1,405 votes. Polling for the vice-chairperson’s post in Kapali Nagar Parshad was cancelled following complaints of discrepancies in EVMs.

“We don’t rule out tampering of EVMs by the electoral officials in favour of BJP candidates in Adityapur Nagar Nigam,” alleged Seraikela-Kharswan Congress party president Debjeet Chatterjee.

Likewise, JMM district president Ranjit Pradhan, who himself lost the mayor’s poll, suspected foul play in the win of BJP candidates in mayor and deputy mayor posts. However, BJP district president Uday Singhdeo criticized JMM and Congress for making excuses after losing the polls.