The President has come home as has the Prime Minister but Sukhram Munda sits in his white house disillusioned with “great leaders” failing to remember their promises.

Sukhram, aged 81, is revered tribal icon Birsa Munda’s great-grandson. He lives with his wife Lakhimoni Devi (65) in a mud-baked house with an asbestos roof at Ulihatu village in Khunti district, 65km from Ranchi.

The village in Arki block’s Barinijkel panchayat, which comes under the Khunti parliamentary constituency in Jharkhand, goes to the hustings in the fourth phase.

“I have seen the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) coming to my house and even the President (Droupadi Murmu). She even spoke to me in Mundari (tribal dialect spoken by the Munda clan). I told both of them my problems, they assured me of resolution through the deputy commissioner at the earliest, but nothing has happened so far.

“I do not know whom to approach now. But I will vote in the election with the hope that a leader will someday keep his assurance,” a frail Sukhram says in Hindi.

President Murmu had visited Ulihatu a few months after being sworn in as the first tribal President of the country. She interacted with Sukhram on November 15, 2022. The Prime Minister came a year later, on November 15, 2023, before launching the Vikshit Bharat Sankalp Yatra from Khunti.

November 15 — the day Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar in 2000 — is observed as Birsa Munda’s birth anniversary and since 2021, the Centre has marked the day as Janjatiya Gaurav Divas (tribal pride day), remembering the contribution of tribal freedom fighters.

Sukhram, who walks with a stick, cannot stand for long durations. He tells The Telegraph about his problems — he has herpes in his left eye, making his vision strained and itchy and suffers from stomach and leg pain.

“I requested the great leaders to arrange a proper pucca (concrete) house for me and my wife and also medical treatment for my eyes. This year they only painted my house white. The administration took me to hospitals in Khunti and Ranchi but I still have the same problem in my eye, stomach and legs,” the octogenarian rues.

“It costs over Rs 2,500 for medicines for which I have to look for help from my sons. I do not want to be a burden on my children. I have an Ayushman Bharat card but it does not help (in purchase of) medicines,” says Sukhram, who avails government pension and ration benefits.

The couple have three children, two sons and a daughter, all of whom live in Khunti, 35km from Ulihatu. The elder son Kanhu works and comes home on Sundays, while his younger brother does petty work and his sister pursues BEd.

Local human rights activist Baa Singh Hassa claims that the administration had painted Sukhram’s house white just before Modi’s visit last November.

“It’s a strange situation when villagers were made prisoners in their own village on November 15 last year. Wherever there were rickety houses, the administration put up tents to shield them from the Prime Minister’s carcade. His (Sukhram Munda) house was painted but no repair was done. Villagers were asked not to come out of their houses. It was a sort of curfew,” says Hassa.

Khunti deputy commissioner Lokesh Mishra, the electoral officer for the Khunti Lok Sabha seat, says the administration had taken Sukhram for medical treatment and was also prepared to allot him a concrete house.

“A few months ago we had taken him to Sadar Hospital in Khunti and the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences in Ranchi for treatment. We are willing to provide him a pucca house under Shahid Gram Vikas Yojana (providing basic infrastructure along with houses for tribal martyrs in Jharkhand) only if they agree,” says Mishra.

Sukhram’s son Kanhu counters that rooms under Shahid Gram Vikas Yojana are small. “The rooms under the government project are very small. We had requested them to increase the size of the rooms but the administration refused,” he says.

Khunti votes on May 13