When four ex-CMs lost in Jharkhand

Jharkhand turned 19 on Friday. Carved out of Bihar on November 15, 2000, the state has already seen three Assembly elections in 2005, 2009 and 2014. However, it has also seen ten chief ministers till date, with the present incumbent Raghubar Das being the first CM to complete his full term.

While JMM patriarch Shibu Soren and BJP leader Arjun Munda have been Chief Ministers three times each, the state also saw Hemant Soren, Madhu Koda (an Independent who became CM in 2006) and Babulal Marandi (the first CM of Jharkhand) donning the mantle once each.

While all previous incumbents were tribals, Raghubar Das is the first and only non-tribal to become the Chief Minister of a tribal-dominated State and complete his term.

However, the political scenario is so unpredictable that during the 2014 Assembly elections, four former chief ministers of the State lost the polls.

The most pathetic situation was that of Babulal Marandi, a soft-spoken tribal MP from Dumka (during 1999 LS polls), who was hand-picked by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to become the first BJP CM of the state, which was formed along with Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand in November 2000.

Marandi, who formed his own outfit, the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (JVM) after dumping the BJP, contested the 2014 polls from two constituencies - Giridih and Dhanwar (both in Giridih district) and lost from both the seats.

Hemant Soren, who was chief minister till December 2014, contested the previous Assembly elections from his traditional seat Dumka as well as Barhait. He lost Dumka but won from Barhait and became Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly.

The third former CM Madhu Koda, who created a record of sorts to become the first Independent to be elected to the post, served as Chief Minister from 2006 to 2008 but lost the 2014 Assembly polls from Majhgaon in Singhbhum. Notably, Koda was on Friday debarred by the Supreme Court from contesting polls till 2020, as the EC has banned him for producing incorrect poll expenses.

The most shocking result in 2014 was that of the defeat of Arjun Munda, a three-term BJP CM and a towering tribal leader. Munda lost from his fiefdom Kharsawan in Singhbhum, which, in turn, paved the way for Raghubar Das, the BJP MLA from Jamshedpur, to become the first non-tribal CM of Jharkhand.