Babulal Marandi: News

Babulal Marandi is a political leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who served as the first Chief Minister of Jharkhand when the state was carved out of Bihar in 2000. As of 2021, he is the Leader of Opposition in the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly. Marandi entered electoral politics through BJP in the 1991 Lok Sabha polls. Though he lost this as well as the next election in 1996, Marandi won from Dumka constituency in the 1998 General Elections by defeating the incumbent Shibu Soren, and became Minister of State (MoS) for Environment & Forests during 1998-2000 in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee's NDA government. Marandi was appointed the first Chief Minister of Jharkhand in 2000 after the NDA's victory but resigned from the post in 2003 due to internal revolts in the government. He contested and won from the Koderma constituency in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections but resigned, this time from the BJP in 2006 to launch his own political party, the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (JVM). He won a by-election from the same seat and remained incumbent till the 2014 General Elections, losing to BJP's Ravindra Ray. After the 2019 Jharkhand Assembly elections, Marandi merged the JVM with the BJP.