At Jharkhand migrant crisis Ground Zero, amid Soren vs Soren, a refrain: ‘Workers fall through cracks in polls’

As Jharkhand’s Dumka Lok Sabha seat gets set to vote in the seventh and final phase of polling on June 1, there would be several “missing” electors in the families of migrant labourers across the constituency – including Maikil Marandi, Ravinder Rai, Bhairo Mirdha, Mahtab Ansari and Salamat Ansari, who died while working in different parts of the country in recent years.

The Dumka constituency lies at the heart of Jharkhand’s migrant labour crisis, which is witnessing a heated electoral fight between BJP candidate Sita Soren – the elder daughter-in-law of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) supremo Shibu Soren – and JMM veteran Nalin Soren, a founding member of the tribal party.

This contest is said to be more than an electoral tussle – it is a fight for dominance between the JMM and the BJP over a seat known as a traditional JMM stronghold from where Shibu Soren has won multiple times. In the 2019 polls, however, the BJP’s Sunil Soren defeated Shibu by 47,590 votes.

In the midst of the high-voltage face-off, several migrant workers’ families feel that the parties and contenders in the fray have turned a blind eye to their concerns and issues.

“There is a disconnect between political debates and the urgent issues affecting the most vulnerable. Leader ko sirf vote chahiye (Leaders only need votes). Both Mahatab and Salamat would have voted for the first time if they had been alive,” said their uncle Halauddin Ansari. They were cousins and residents of Barmasia area of Shikaripara block in Dumka.

Their case is not an isolated one. Since March 2020, the State Migrant Control Room under the Jharkhand government’s labour ministry has been collecting data on the state’s migrant workers who have gone to various states for their