The ruling JMM-Congress-RJD alliance in Jharkhand suffered its first bypoll defeat since the formation of the Hemant Soren-led government in December 2019 as the NDA won the Ramgarh Assembly seat on Thursday.

The BJP-supported AJSU candidate Sunita Choudhary, wife of Giridih MP Chandra Prakash Choudhary, defeated Congress candidate Bajrang Mahto, who was supported by JMM, RJD and also Left parties, by 21,709 votes.

In the last four bye-elections — Dumka, Madhupur, Bermo and Mandar — held under the Soren-led government, the ruling alliance had registered comfortable wins.

Although the bypoll result will not affect the Jharkhand government at the moment, it is certainly a morale-boosting victory for the BJP-AJSU coalition.

“This is the beginning of the end of the Hemant Soren government. We fought the election together (with BJP) and won. People are tired of the lies and corruption under the Soren government. We went to the masses with the shortcomings of the government and got the support of the BJP. We are confident that in the 2024 Assembly elections, we will come to power by fighting the election with the support of the BJP,” said AJSU chief and Silli MLA Sudesh Mahto.

At the moment (after the Ramgarh bypoll result), the Congress has 17 MLAs while RJD has one MLA and JMM has 30 MLAs which is far ahead of the majority of 41 seats required in the 81-member Jharkhand Assembly.

“We knew it would be a tough fight as Chandra Prakash Choudhary had represented the Ramgarh Assembly constituency for three terms (from 2005 to 2019). Our candidate won the election in 2019 due to a split in vote between the AJSU and the BJP. But we were hopeful of people casting in favour of our candidate on the basis of a sympathy wave. But it did not happen,” said a senior Congress leader based in Ranchi.

In the 2019 Assembly polls, Mamta Devi polled 44.7 per cent votes (99,944), while Sunita Choudhary of AJSU polled 31.8 per cent vote (71,226) and BJP’s Rananjay Kumar polled 14.26 per cent vote (31,874).

The election was necessitated after the sitting Congress MLA Mamta Devi was disqualified following her conviction in December last year by the Hazaribagh district court in the Gola police firing case of 2016. She was awarded five years of imprisonment. She is currently in Hazaribagh jail.