Gandey Assembly Election Results Live: Can Hemant Soren's wife Kalpana repeat bypoll victory?

Gandey Assembly Election Results Live: Hemant Soren's wife, Kalpana Soren, who won the seat in the bypoll held this year in May, fought a poll battle against BJP's Muniya Devi.

Gandey Assembly Election Results Live: The Election Commission of India is set to start votes counting process shortly. It would be interesting to see, how Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren’s wife and JMM leader Kalpana Soren performed in the bitterly-fought assembly elections on the Gandey seat. Kalpana had won the seat in the bypoll held in May 2024. In a 2024 assembly by-election, Kalpana Soren emerged victorious with 1,09,827 votes. Dilip Verma of the BJP received 82,678 votes, and 4,219 voters chose the None of the Above (NOTA) option. 

Gandey, which is one of the general seats, saw a tough poll battle between ruling the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

What happened in assembly elections 2019 and 2014

In the 2019 Assembly Elections, Dr Sarfraj Ahmad from JMM won the seat with a margin of 8,855 votes. Sarfraj was polled 65,023 votes with a vote share of 34.71 per cent and defeated Jai Prakash Verma from BJP who secured  56,168 votes (29.98 per cent). Arjun Baitha of the All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU) garnered 15,361 votes and came on third position. In the 2019 elections, Sarfaraz Ahmed of the JMM became the MLA from. However, he resigned in December 2023 and became a Member of Parliament (MP) in the Rajya Sabha. 

In the 2014 Assembly Elections, Jai Prakash Verma of the BJP won the seat and was polled 48,838 votes. Salikhan Soren from JMM received 38,559 votes, and Sarfaraz Ahmed from Congress secured 35,727 votes.

Kalpana Soren VS Muniya Devi

JMM fielded Kalpana Soren, while BJP pitted Muniya Devi against her. Kalpana Soren is currently representing the Gandey constituency. She had won the constituency by a margin of 27,149 votes. The seat became vacant following the resignation of JMM MLA Sarfaraz Ahmad. Kalpana Soren, the JMM leader and wife of Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, filed her nomination as her party candidate from the Gandey Assembly constituency.

Kalpana faced a tough fight from BJP’s Muniya Devi, who is currently the chairperson of the Giridih District Council. Interestingly, Muniya Devi was a housewife before 2010, when she was elected as a Zila Parishad Member and then became the president of Zila Parishad from Jamua East in 2010-11. In 2022, she was again elected Zila Parishad Member and became the Zila Parishad president.

The 2024 Assembly elections in Gandey held on November 20 (Wednesday). 

Jharkhand Assembly Elections

The elections took place in two phases, on November 13 and November 20. According to the Election Commission of India's data, about 2.60 crore electors, including 11.84 lakh first-time voters and 1.13 lakh persons with disabilities, third-gender individuals, and senior citizens over 85, were aligibel to exercise their franchise. The BJP, which lost power to the JMM-led alliance in Jharkhand in 2019, is looking to reclaim its position in the tribal-dominated state.

In 2019, the ruling JMM-led alliance bagged 47 seats, wresting power from the saffron party in the state. The JMM had secured 30 seats, while the Congress bagged 16, and the RJD one seat. The BJP had managed to win 25 seats, JVM-P three, AJSU Party two, and the CPI-ML and NCP one each, besides two Independents emerging victorious.