I f the country wants to listen to the verdict of Jharkhand there are some clear cut lessons for all political parties. Prof. Shibu Soren had led a powerful movement for the creation of a separate Jharkhand state. He did succeed in his life time. How far the aspirations of the people herepresentedcouldbefulfilledinhis lifetimecouldbedebated. Whether the tribal population in Jharkhand found a truthful loyal leader in him could also be debated. But the way Hemant Soren got elected at two constituencies with comfortable majority , has proved that the huge national party , funded by national corporate and loyal to their interests has been uprooted from a state which had given it full mandate in Lok Sabha elections. This proves that despite state power exercised to the full, it is not possible to win an election if the popular sentiment is on the other side. The JMM and INC alliance won 47 seats while BJP could getonly25inanassemblyof81assemblyconstituencies.BJPinherarrogance allowed the NDA partners to contest independently and contested 79 seats herself not giving any space to the alliance partners. This was the reason why it lost so crushingly. The main reason behind the defeat of BJP is its neglect of tribal leadership of its own party. It relied too much on Raghuvar Prasad and ignored leaders like Arjun Munda and Saryu Rai. Since RSS has become too dominant in BJP, it insists on preferringBrahminorupper casteHinduleadership.TheUPassembly elections showed their indifference to Muslims as not a single Muslim was given the ticket by BJP to contest elections. Here in Jharkhand they were averse to tribals since tribals are also not Hindus. Besides , the entire coal block scam had been exposed and it came out clearly that BJP was in favour of giving away land owned by the tribal community to the corporate. This they did forcibly by removing tribal people protesting for their land. The JMM could convin ce that BJP was playing in the hands of the corporate and that JMM alone could contest for their grounds.Another lessonthatthiselectionhas revealedis thatneitherNCR_CAA could help BJP much, nor the judgment on Ayodhya could win them Hindu votes. Weakening of article 370 also did not have much impact either. The politics of polarization did not work in Jharkhand at least. The issues of employment, command over natural resources and self respect emerged as important in electoral politics. PM Modi held eleven rallies in Jharkhand while Amit Shah addressed eleven rallies. They talked of the stereotypes like Ram Mandir, and Article 370 and CAA-NRC.Theirfailure is an indication enough to understandthatthevoterofIndiaismatureenoughnottobeswayed by such gimmicks

- Dr. H.S.Chandalia