Jharkhand polls: BJP releases list of star campaigners

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday released a list of 40 star campaigners who would be campaigning for the party in the first phase of the ensuing Jharkhand Assembly polls.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister and BJP national president Amit Shah, BJP working president JP Nadda, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, party general secretary BL Santosh, Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das are among the 40 star campaigners.

The list also includes Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Union Ministers Arjun Munda, Prahlad Joshi, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Dharmendra Prasad, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Smriti Irani, Arjun Ram Meghwal and Nityanand Rai.

Amongst other party leaders Arun Singh, Jual Oram, Keshav Prasad Maurya, Om Prakash Mathur, Soudan Singh, Nand Kishore Yadav, Manoj Tiwari, Sunny Deol, Ravi Kishan, Laxman Giluwa, VD Ram, Ram Vichar Netam, Sudarshan Bhagat, Sameer Oraon, Kariya Munda, Dharampal Singh, Deepak Prakash, Sunil Singh, Annapurna Devi Yadav, Sanjay Seth, Ravindra Rai, Mangal Pandey, Mahendra Singh and Aditya Sahu also feature in the list.

The JMM, the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) have forged an alliance to defeat the ruling BJP. JMM will contest on 43 seats in the 81-member Assembly. The Congress and RJD will field their candidates on 31 and seven seats respectively.

Jharkhand will go to polls in five phases from November 30. The first phase of polling will be held on November 30, the second phase on December 6, the third phase on December 12, the fourth phase on December 16 and the last phase on December 20.

This will be the fourth Assembly election in Jharkhand since the state was carved out of Bihar in 2000.

In 2014, the BJP, which won 35 seats formed the government along with All Jharkhand Students' Union (AJSU) which had won 5 seats and Raghubar Das took over as the Chief Minister.

JMM finished second in the tally with 17 seats while Congress was decimated to just six assembly seats.

BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had won 12 out of 14 parliamentary seats in 2019 general elections in the state.