A giant killer without a party: How Saryu Roy defeated Raghubar Das

Roy almost single-handedly engineered electoral defeat of Raghubar Das. He is also credited with derailing political careers of Lalu Prasad and Madhu Koda

It is unusual for a chief minister to lose his own assembly seat along with his party’s majority. It’s even rarer when it happens to a chief minister who’s kept that seat in five successive elections. And it’s unheard of when the giant killer is not supported by the winning combination of parties but contested on an independent platform.

Yet, all this happened last week in Jharkhand to Raghubar Das, who’d steered the state administration for a full five-year term, with full backing from the leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He’d won from his home seat of Jamshedpur East