The BJP on March 20 suffered a major setback in Jharkhand as its MLA from Mandu, Jai Prakash Bhai Patel, joined the Congress.

The three-term MLA and BJP’s chief whip in the Jharkhand Assembly joining the Congress has made the fight in the Hazaribagh parliamentary seat interesting.

Jharkhand Congress president Rajesh Thakur who was in Delhi during the joining of Patel confirmed that he was very much in contention for being given the party ticket for the Hazaribagh (general) constituency.

“We want a strong winnable candidate and Patel is certainly one of them. The seat-sharing between the INDIA bloc (Congress-JMM-RJD-Left) along with the names of candidates would be announced in a day or two for Jharkhand. The Congress will field its candidate for Hazaribagh,” said Thakur.

A Congress leader based in Ranchi confided to The Telegraph that the entire ‘deal’ between Patel and the party leaders was struck by former Union minister and former BJP veteran Yashwant Sinha.

“We all know Yashwant Sinha knows the inside-out Hazaribagh seat having represented it three times in Parliament and was pivotal behind his son (sitting MP from Hazaribagh Jayant Sinha) winning from Hazaribagh two times. We worked on his advice and the deal was struck with Patel,” said the leader.

BJP’s Jayant Sinha won in 2019 defeating Gopal Sahu of the Congress. However, he decided to opt out of this year with an announcement on his social media handle at around 2.30pm on March 2 and the BJP announcing Manish Jaiswal as a candidate from Hazaribagh few hours later.