Missing the Poll Bus
The once formidable independent candidates face criminal charges and political eclipse
Madhu Koda, Jharkhand’s only ‘independent’ chief minister, who ruled the state for about two years between 2006 and 2008, suddenly finds himself out of the electoral race as the five-phase assembly election kicks off in the state from November 30.
Koda had approached the Supreme Court to challenge his three-year disqualification by the Election Commission (EC) in September 2017 for failing to submit expense details related to the 2009 Lok Sabha election contest from Singhbhum. On November 15, the court issued a notice to the EC on Koda’s petition. It also ruled that pending a response from the poll panel, Koda could not be allowed to contest the assembly election.
Koda, who became chief minister in September 2006 by toppling the Arjun Munda-led BJP government, is being probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for alleged money-laundering. He also faces a disproportionate assets case registered by the Jharkhand vigilance department.
Koda, Harinarayan Rai and Anosh Ekka are part of a clutch of once-powerful independent MLAs who find themselves out of the assembly election race in Jharkhand. The other two lawmakers who make up this ‘formidable five’ are Kamlesh Singh and Bhanu Pratap Shahi.
Rai’s petition seeking the nod to contest the election was turned down by the Jharkhand High Court on November 14. An ED special court convicted the
THE FIVE LEADERS HAVE DETERMINED THE FATE OF SUCCESSIVE GOVERNMENTS IN JHARKHAND
former minister in a money-laundering case in January 2017 and handed him a seven-year prison term. Rai had won the 2009 assembly election, but lost in 2014.
Ekka won both the assembly polls, but his fortunes nosedived after a July 2018 conviction and life imprisonment for the murder of a para teacher in the run-up to the 2014 assembly poll. His wife Menon Ekka finished fourth in the December ’18 Kolebira assembly bypoll.
Shahi, the sitting MLA from Bhawanathpur, is contesting the seat on a BJP ticket, but faces stiff resistance, with rivals expected to rake up the corruption allegations against him. The former health minister is being investigated by the ED in a money-laundering case, which saw his assets being attached. His name also figures in a multi-crore medicine scam in the state.
Singh, who is state president of the NCP, last tasted electoral success in the 2005 assembly poll, winning his seat by just 35 votes. He lost the 2009 and 2014 assembly elections.
The five veterans of Jharkhand politics wielded enormous clout in the state’s power corridors between March 2005 and December 2009—a period during which the state weathered five governments, including 11 months of president’s rule—and held plum cabinet posts. Successive governments, led by Shibu Soren of the JMM and Munda, made way for the Koda-led government in 2006. Though Soren engineered a split in the ‘formidable five’ to unseat Koda and become chief minister again in August 2008, his government fell within five months as Ekka fielded a candidate against him in a bypoll that he needed to win to continue as chief minister. ■