JMM leader Hemant Soren served as Chief Minister of Jharkhand for a little over year in 2013
Former Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, the face of the opposition JMM-RJD-Congress alliance in the state, has thanked the people for giving them a "mandate" in the ongoing Assembly elections. The JMM-Congress combine is trending well above the majority mark of 41 in the 81-member House and is set to unseat the ruling BJP in a shock result. Mr Soren, who has been projected as the chief ministerial candidate of the alliance, said the partners would meet soon to "strategize the future course of action".
"The results that have come so far... the people of Jharkhand have given us (a) mandate and I thank them for that. It is a day of celebration for the people and time for us to work on all promises that were made," Hemant Soren told reporters today.
"We fought in a mahagathbandhan (grand alliance)... I want to thank Lalu-ji, Sonia-ji, Rahul-ji and Priyanka-ji and all those Congress workers who fought with us. I want to thank them all for believing in me," he added.
Mr Soren, who was Jharkhand's fifth Chief Minister and is currently leading from the Dumka seat, also promised voters "no matter if women, workers, farmers, children or elderly" their hopes will not be broken.
"No matter if women, workers, farmers, children or elderly, everyone is a part of the democracy. Our mahagathbandhan colleagues are not with us now but we will all sit together and discuss what to do next," he said.
The opposition alliance in the state - the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) - is leading in 46 seats, at the time of writing this, while the BJP is ahead in 25 - 12 down from the last election.
Current Chief Minister Raghubar Das of the BJP had earlier said his party could not be written off but, later in the evening, appeared to concede defeat and said "The BJP will accept the people's mandate, whatever it is. If at all BJP loses after the final results, I will consider as my defeat"
Home Minister Amit Shah also appeared to conceded defeat and said the BJP would "respect the mandate given by the people of Jharkhand".
This morning BJP national spokesperson Vijay Sonkar Shastri told NDTV the results were "not on expected lines". He said it seemed the party had failed to convince people on its development agenda.
For the BJP, these results are crucial.
The party lost Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh to the Congress last year. This year, after a huge victory in the Lok Sabha election, Maharashtra slipped out of its grasp after it fell out with ally Shiv Sena over power-sharing.
Since its formation in 2000, Jharkhand had nine governments and three stints of President's Rule.
In July, Hemant Soren took over as Chief Minister, the country's youngest, at the age of 38. But he held office for a little more than a year. In the assembly elections of 2014, the BJP came to power.
The counting of votes began at 8 am in all 24 district headquarters. The elections took place in five phases from November 30 to December 20.
In the general election the BJP won 11 of 14 seats in the state.