RANCHI: Congress released the first list of 21 candidates for Jharkhand elections on October 21. The list also includes five woman candidates.
The list was released after the meeting of the Central Election Committee held in New Delhi. Expressing confidence over old faces, the party has fielded 15 sitting MLAs and four ministers – Dr Irfan Ansari, Badal Patralekh, Deepika Pandey Singh, Rameshwar Oraon and Banna Gupta.
Former IPS officer Ajoy Kumar is also among the 21 candidates named by the grand old party. Rameshwar Oraon, a former IPS and former state Congress Chief, has been fielded from the Lohardaga seat reserved for Scheduled Tribes. Ajoy Kumar will contest the election from Jamshedpur East. Kumar has been a Lok Sabha MP from Jamshedpur and is the Congress in-charge for Tripura, Odisha and Nagaland.
Mamta Devi has been fielded from Ramgarh, Deepika Pandey Singh from Mahgama, Amba Prasad from Barkagaon, Purnima Neeraj Singh from Jharia and Shilpi Neha Tirekey from Mandar Assembly seat.
Minister Banna Gupta will contest from Jamshedpur West, while Ajay Nath Sahdev has been given a ticket from Hatia. Bhushan Bara will contest from Simdega and Munna Singh has been given a ticket from Hazaribagh.
According to the announcement made earlier by Chief Minister Hemant Soren, the JMM and Congress will contest 70 seats together, while Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the left parties’ altogether will get 11 seats.
The first phase of voting is scheduled to be held on November 13 for which notification has already been issued. The nomination process for the first phase will be done till October 25. After this, scrutiny of the forms will be done on October 28. Candidates can withdraw their names till October 30.
Voting for the second phase is to be held on November 20, for which notification will be issued for this on October 22. The last date for nomination is October 29. Voting will be held on November 20 for the second phase. Scrutiny of nomination papers will be done on October 30. Candidates can withdraw their names till November 1.
The counting of votes will be done on November 23.
There are 81 seats in the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly, out of which, 44 are unreserved and 28 are reserved for ST and 09 for SC.
As per the data of the Election Commission of India, there are a total of 2.6 crore voters in Jharkhand as on October 15, 2024. Out of those, 1.29 crore are women and 1.31 crore are men. In this election, 11.84 lakh youth will exercise their franchise for the first time.
