Tribulations of the tribal state

The BJP could come to power in Jharkhand by the back-door

The 2019 Assembly elections saw the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) resounding defeat at the hands of the alliance comprising the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Congress, and other smaller parties. Raghubar Das, the incumbent BJP chief minister (CM), couldn’t win even his own seat (Jamshedpur East) and lost to a former colleague, Saryu Roy, by more than 15,000 votes, not a small margin for an Assembly election. In the 81-seat legislature, the JMM alone got 30 seats. The configuration of the Assembly suggested that even if the BJP wanted, with just 25 seats it would not be