The Congress candidate from Jamshedpur East constituency in Jharkhand, Ajoy Kumar, has complained to the Election Commission (EC) against Odisha governor Raghubar Das for “actively campaigning” for his daughter-in-law in the constituency.

The letter addressed to the chief election commissioner on Wednesday alleges that former Jharkhand chief minister Raghubar Das “has been found campaigning for his daughter-in-law Purnima Das, a candidate from Jamshedpur East constituency, a seat the Odisha governor himself held five times on BJP ticket”.

Jamshedpur East will go to polls on November 13 and there is a direct contest between Purnima Das of the BJP and the Congress candidate Ajoy Kumar, who has been popular for putting a leash on organised crime during his tenure as Jamshedpur superintendent of police from 1994 to 1996 in erstwhile Bihar. Kumar is also the AICC in-charge of Odisha and Tamil Nadu.

In the 2019 Assembly polls, the then chief minister Raghubar Das lost the Jamshedpur East seat to former BJP leader Saryu Roy who fought as an Independent. In 2024, Saryu Roy joined the JDU and according to the seat-sharing agreement between NDA allies, he will contest on the JDU ticket from the Jamshedpur West constituency.

“Raghubar Das involving himself in electioneering while holding a gubernatorial post is a clear violation of the Constitution. This blatant disregard of the constitutional chair and its responsibilities is totally unacceptable,” the letter alleges.

The letter refers to the recommendations of the Sarkaria Commission regarding the institution of a governor and says: “It clearly states that any person to be appointed as a Governor should not be intimately connected with the local politics.”

The letter further states that in the past as well, people holding the constitutional post of Governor have resigned to rejoin active politics.

“It is, therefore, important to analyse whether a person holding the highest constitutional office of Governor be allowed to participate in active politics while holding the constitutional post,” the letter further states.

“In the past few months we had also seen and it was very evident that Odisha Raj Bhavan had turned into a ‘political adda’ for the upcoming Jharkhand election. Tragically that seems to be a kind of naked prejudice of the EC and failure to act against Raghubar Das is writ large as our Constitution has completely been compromised,” the letter alleges.

The letter cites local newspaper reports and alleges that Raghubar Das was continuously holding meetings with the BJP local booth committee members of the Jamshedpur East constituency.

The letter requests ECI to take urgent steps toward the complaint.

The JMM released a list of 36 candidates for different constituencies while the RJD and the CPI-ML released a list of candidates’ names for six and four constituencies respectively as per the seat-sharing agreement finalised after the intervention of chief minister Hemant Soren for the INDIA bloc on Tuesday late night.

The Congress had already released a list of 21 candidates for the first phase.

The CPM and CPI will contest the polls separately from the INDIA bloc as they did in the Lok Sabha polls.