One of Jharkhand’s most backward districts, Chatra bordering Bihar is in the lowest position among the bottom 10 of the country’s “aspirational districts” on health and nutrition, as per the NITI Aayog’s 2024 rankings of such districts. Chatra has also been ranked among the bottom 10 on the score of education.

The district’s two Assembly seats, Chatra and Simaria, both reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SCs), are heading to polls in the first phase on November 13. Many in these constituencies, mostly rural covered with forests, seem to be divided between the incumbent JMM-led INDIA alliance and the Opposition BJP-led NDA for a variety of reasons. Both the seats have sizeable presence of Dalits, tribals, OBCs, upper caste Bhumihars and Rajputs, and Muslims.

A section of local residents supporting the BJP believe that the party gave them “freedom from the Naxal menace”. Several others backing the JMM-Congress-RJD coalition say that the Hemant Soren-led government has also maintained a tough stand against Naxals besides ensuring various welfare schemes for the underprivileged.

In the 2019 Assembly polls, the BJP’s Kishun Kumar Das had won from Simaria, defeating the AJSU Party (AJSUP)’s Manoj Kumar Chandra by about 11,000 votes, with the JMM’s ally Congress finishing at fourth place. This time, the BJP has denied ticket to Das over perceived “anti-incumbency” against him, nominating Kumar Ujjawal from the seat. On the other hand, Chandra switched to the JMM and has got its ticket as the AJSUP has become a BJP ally now.

In the Chatra seat, in 2019, the RJD’s Satyanand Bhokta had trounced the BJP’s Janardan Paswan by 24,000 votes. A member of the outgoing Soren Cabinet, Bhokta is currently the Minister for Labour, Employment, Training and Skill Development, and Industries. However, he is not contesting the election this time since his caste was shifted to the list of the Scheduled Tribes (STs) by the Centre in 2022. In his place, the ruling camp has fielded his daughter-in-law Rashmi Prakash, 26, who belongs to the Dalit community.

The BJP has allotted this seat to its NDA ally LJP(Ram Vilas) which has given its ticket to the 2019 runner-up Janardan Paswan after inducting him into its fold last month. Chatra has been one of the worst Naxal-affected districts in Jharkhand, which was a subdivision of Hazaribagh district before 1991. It had faced Left-wing extremism from the Naxal outfit Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) which later merged with People’s War to form the banned CPI(Maoist) in 2004. In recent years, however, the security personnel including the Chatra police have successfully managed to curb the Naxal activities in the region. “Today you are seeing us sitting in the open and playing cards, that is because of BJP that eliminated Naxalism.

Before the BJP came to power at the Centre and in the state, Naxals were active here and my neighbour became a casualty. But when BJP came to power in 2014 in Jharkhand under CM Raghubar Das with the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, they put an end to Naxalism here,” says Harendra Sahu, a farmer in Amgawan village in Simaria. Sahu says, “It is disappointing that Chatra district could not benefit from its inclusion in the Centre’ Aspirational Districts Programme (ADP),” blaming the Soren government for it. He says due to lack of healthcare facilities in the district, patients with serious illness or injuries are rushed to the neighbouring Hazaribagh, which at times lead to their death. Echoing him, Amgawan’s mukhia Umesh Ram, a Dalit, says the health centres in Simaria lack infrastructure to deal with emergency medical care. A resident of Simaria’s Tutilawa village, Bhuvaneswar Thakur, an OBC, says he would again vote for the BJP in the upcoming elections because of the “Modi government’s crackdown on Naxals”.

“Earlier, villagers used to lock themselves behind the doors after sunset due to the movement of Naxals. Modi gave us freedom from them. Modi provided toilets at the doorstep and water connection through solar-powered jal minars. This road passing through the village was also developed under the BJP rule. No other PM in the past worked for rural people in this manner,” Bhuvaneswar, 72, says. His relative Harish Thakur praises the Soren government for developing roads, giving loan waiver to farmers and ensuring various welfare schemes for the people. Bhuvaneswar, however, interrupts him to claim, “That would not have been possible if Naxalism had not been eliminated by the BJP.” Abhimanyu Singh, a farmer in Hafua village in Chatra, says the Soren government’s Mukyamantri Maiya Samman Yojana – under which a monthly payout of Rs 1,000 is made to underprivileged women in 18-50 age group – has been creating a resonance among the people. “But it had been better if he (Soren) would have given employment. His government did not pay attention to creating jobs,” Singh says. He also demands that the Modi government should develop a railway track in the belt. A railway track has been in place in Chatra for decades, but it is dedicated to goods trains for transporting coal.

The passenger trains are not operational in the district, and people have to go to Koderma (in Jharkhand) and Gaya (in Bihar) to board them. A 28-year-old resident of Badhar village, Sudhir Saw, says he backs the BJP for its Hindutva politics, alleging that “the sitting RJD MLA (Bhokta) did not fulfil his promise to develop infrastructure in the local Shiva temple complex but ensured a boundary wall around a kabristan (graveyard) for Muslims”.

His neighbour Prakash Saw, who runs a medical shop, says Chatra has fared poorly on the health front due to a lack of medical personnel. “Hospital building has been upgraded but the staff is not there. Likewise, an ITI building and a fashion institute were built here several years ago but are not operational due to lack of staff,” he says. Defending the Soren government, the RJD’s Jharkhand spokesperson Rakesh Jha says, “While curbs on Naxals began in 2014, more work in this regard was done after Soren government came to power in 2019. Most of development in Chatra happened during the Soren government,” he claims.

On Chatra’s poor performance as an aspirational district, Jha says, “First two-three years of Soren government was hit by the Covid pandemic. Later, the BJP’s central government tried to destabilise it through baseless cases against CM. But the Soren government still opened a hospital in Chatra and set up Swasthya Suvidha Kendra. Roads were developed and benefits of skill development were extended to youths and women. He (Soren) started a change in Jharkhand.”

On the same question, the BJP’s Chatra MP Kali Charan Singh says, “It appears that public representatives and officers did not have proper coordination and couldn’t execute the development programmes. They were not aware of social issues on the ground. They had no idea about improving health facilities and benefiting people.” Kali Charan claims he has urged the Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw to launch the passenger trains operations in Chatra. In January 2018, the Modi government had launched the ADP that sought to quickly transform the 112 most under-developed districts in the country. In Jharkhand, 19 of its 24 districts have been included in the ADP, which account for 66 of the state’s 81 Assembly seats.