Jharkhand elections: Himanta Sarma accuses Congress of ‘selling’ poll tickets over MLA’s donation claim

Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Friday lashed out at the Congress, accusing the grand old party of having a “tradition of selling election tickets”.

According to a PTI report, Congress MLA from Jharkhand’s Barhi assembly seat Umashankar Akela claimed he was denied a ticket for not being able to pay ₹2 crore donation to the party.

Reacting to Akela’s claims, Sarma said,”This is nothing new… Congress has a long-standing tradition of selling around 20 percent of its tickets. It happens in every state.”

The Assam chief minister, who is the BJP’s co-incharge in poll-bound Jharkhand, said,”NDA fields one candidate per seat, the INDIA bloc is struggling with seat-sharing disputes.”

Akela, who was denied a ticket, claimed he would have secured one if he could pay the alleged sum. But the Congress rejected his allegations, attributing his exclusion to poor performance.

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NDA vs INDIA direct fight in Jharkhand

The assembly election in Jharkhand will witness a direct contest between the INDIA block and the NDA.

As per the seat-sharing arrangement in NDA, BJP will contest 68 seatsAJSU will fight on 10 seats, JD(U) on two and LJP (Ram Vilas) will contest one seat.

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In the INDIA block, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and Congress will contest 70 out of 81 seats and the remaining will be contested by allies.

The Jharkhand assembly polls will be held in two phases – November 13 and November 20 – with the counting of votes on November 23.

As many as 433 candidates filed nomination papers for the 43 assembly constituencies in the first phase until Thursday.

The filing of nominations for the second phase began on October 22 and will continue until October 29.

2019 Jharkhand assembly election results

In 2019, the JMM-led alliance won 47 seats, wresting power from the BJP. The BJP had secured 25 seats, JVM-P three, AJSU Party two, and the CPI (ML) and NCP one each, besides two Independents emerging victorious.

(With PTI inputs)