Sudesh Mahato
– Photo : X / @SudeshMahtoAJSU
Expansion
NDA's ally AJSU party in Jharkhand on Sunday released its first list of eight candidates for the assembly elections. Party chief Sudesh Kumar Mahato has been fielded from Silli. According to seat distribution, AJSU will contest elections on ten seats. While JDU will field candidates on two seats and LJP (Ram Vilas) on one seat. BJP will field its candidates in the remaining 68 seats.
Mahato had won the Silli assembly seat in 2019 by a margin of 20,195 votes. He had defeated his nearest rival Seema Devi of JMM. AJSU party said that its sitting MLA Sunita Chaudhary will contest from Ramgarh and Nehru Shanti Bhagat from Lohardaga. Chaudhary had won the by-election from Ramgarh seat in March 2023, defeating UPA-backed Congress's Bajrang Mahato by a margin of 21,970 votes.
The by-election was held after Congress MLA Mamata Devi was disqualified after her conviction in a criminal case. Chaudhary had lost to Mamta Devi from Ramgarh seat in 2019 by a margin of 28,718 votes. Bhagat, who contested the elections from Lohardaga, had secured third position among 219. The party's sitting MLA Lambodar Mahato is contesting re-election from Gomia. Gomiya had last defeated JMM's Babita Devi by 1039 votes.
In 2019, Ramchandra Sahis had secured third position from Jugsalai, now he will contest this seat on AJSU Party ticket. At the same time, Nirmal Mahato will also try his luck from Mandu, where he had secured second place in 2019. Harelal Mahato, who stood second from Ichagarh for five years, will now contest elections from there. Apart from this, Azhar Islam will be the AJSU candidate from Pakur.
Elections for 81 seats of Jharkhand Assembly will be held in two phases on November 13 and 20 and counting of votes will be done on November 23. In 2019, the JMM-led alliance wrested power from the BJP by winning 47 seats. JMM had won 30 seats, while Congress had won 16 and RJD had won one seat. BJP had won 25 seats. While JVM-P got three seats, AJSU Party got two, CPI-ML and NCP got one seat each. Apart from this, two independent candidates also won.
