Eye on Lok Sabha polls, JMM looks to better booth-level units

RANCHI: Jharkhand Mukti Morcha’s (JMM) central committee on Tuesday asked its district units to strengthen the party’s organisational base in booth, panchayat and block levels with an eye on the Lok Sabha elections next year.
Party president Shibu Soren asked the committee members to increase public contact programmes and reach the panchayat levels with the state government’s recent welfare schemes.
The impending bypolls to the Dumri assembly seat, which fell vacant on April 6 this year following the death of Jagarnath Mahto, was also taken up at the meeting. With the Congress failing to retain the Ramgarh seat in February this year, all eyes are now on whether JMM will be able to maintain its record of clean sweeps in all the bypolls it contested in the state since 2020.
Shibu asked the Bokaro district committee to constitute booth, panchayat and block level committees in Dumri at the earliest to prepare for Dumri bypolls. All did not appear well inside the JMM rank and file as two of its veteran lawmakers, Borio MLA Lobin Hembrom and Bishunpur MLA Chamra Linda skipped the meet.
“Some of our MLAs such as Dipak Birua and Niral Purty could not make it to today’s meet because they are on committee tours. We will have to check why others did not turn up and inform the president and the executive president (Hemant Soren) accordingly,” JMM spokesperson Vinod Kumar Pandey said.
JMM’s district representatives from the Kolhan division firmly advocated that the party must field its candidate in the Singbhum Lok Sabha constituency in the next year’s polls.
“They were of the view that since all the five assembly seats under Singbhum constituency is being held by JMM, we must field our candidate there. But the final decision will be taken by the party leadership,” JMM’s Gandey MLA Sarfaraz Ahmed said.
JMM said it was too early to discuss seat-sharing arrangements for Lok Sabha polls. “We have the most number of assembly seats in Jharkhand. We will sit with our partners and discuss seats at the apt time,” Pandey said. The JMM also hinted that it would accommodate the Left parties in the Mahagathbandhan coalition in the pre-poll arrangements that would be held next year.