Jharkhand Assembly Polls: Congress Leader Gourav Vallabh To Contest Against CM Raghubar Das

Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh has been fielded against Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das from Jamshedpur East for the upcoming Assembly elections in the state. Gourav Vallabh, who served as a finance professor at the XLRI Management Institute in Jamshedpur, came to limelight after the video of him countering BJP's firebrand spokesperson Sambit Patra went viral.

Born to a family of academicians, he is the first one in his family to join politics. Vallabh joined the grand oldy as one of the party's 10 fresh spokespersons only in January.

The other name in the list released by the Congress party is of Mamta Devi who has been fielded from Ramgarh.

Meanwhile, AJSU has announced candidate against a BJP minister Amar Kumar Bauri from Chandankiyari. Following which the saffron party on Saturday hit back nominating its nominee on a seat from where All Jharkhand Students Union minister is in the field.

In its fourth list of three candidates announced on Saturday and a copy of which was released to the media, the BJP nominated Mochiram Bauri from Jugsalai (SC) seat against AJSU leader Ram Chandra SahisSahis, who is Water Resources minister in the state.

The other two names of the BJP in the fourth list are Sudhir Sundi (Jaganthapur-ST) and Reeta Devi Munda (Tamar-ST), taking the BJPs total contestants to 72 for the five-phase polls to the 81-member Jharkhand assembly.

The AJSU party headed by Sudesh Mahto has already announced 19 candidates, 15 of whom will be clashing with the BJP contestants along with others. The 15 constituencies where AJSU and BJP candidates will be pitted against each other along with rest of the nominees include Chandankiyari, where Mahto’s party has fielded former minister Uma Kant Razzak against Bauri.

The elections are scheduled between November 30 and December 20 in Jharkhand and counting will take place on December 23.

Ruling NDA allies- BJP and AJSU party- who have been part of all the governments of the coalition in Jharkhand since it was carved out of Bihar in 2000 have not achieved seat-sharing agreement so far despite several rounds of talks between the leaders of the two parties at different levels.

BJP has named 72 candidates so far and only nine seats are left out of the total 81 assembly segments.