the jamshedpur east constituency has always remained a tough battle for jmm which spearheaded the jharkhand movement from 1970s there are six assembly seats jamshedpur east jamshedpur west jugsalai potka ghatsila and baharagora that fall under the jamshedpur lok sabha seat though jmm could manage to bag five of the seats at least once in the past elections jamshedpur east never came to the tribal party the party has been fielding its candidates from the seat then a part of undivided bihar since 1985 but this time it decided to leave it for congress in the seatsharing deal political analysts say the move was intentional as jmm wants to ride piggyback on the grand old party to make a mark in the constituency however things have not been rosy even for congress in this seat with the last time the party winning it here was way back in 1985 it was congresss d nariman who managed to bag around 31000 votes in 1985 after prime minister indira gandhis assassination in 1984 while bjps dinanath pandey was a distant second with just 2000 votes jmm managed to get only 238 votes jamshedpur east mainly comprises urban voters of which a majority chunk are hindus from bihar who settled in the steel city after getting jobs in tata group of companies and the ancillary units in the industrial belt this saw a surge in votes for bjp since the 1990 assembly polls the other vote bank the saffron party enjoys here is that of the 25000strong sikh community a majority of which shifted its allegiance to bjp after the 1984 antisikh riotsin the 1990 polls pandey managed to surge ahead with around 32000 votes while the congress managed approximately 20000 votes meanwhile jmm continued to be a distant contestant with sashi bhushan prasad getting only 2000 votes in the 1995 assembly election bjp denied to give a ticket to pandey and selected raghubar das who was a mazdoor at tata steel then tisco as their candidate from jamshedpur east burying all speculations of an internal strife das won his first polls with a margin of 10000 votes congresss k p singh a known face in jamshedpur failed to make a mark while jmms ramdas soren yet again settled at only 7000 votesin the 2000 state polls jmm tried to play the sikh card and fielded sailender singh from jamshedpur east but it did not yield any result by this time the sikhs had already become a traditional vote bank of the bjp in this seat while singh got only 4000 votes das won from the seat again and managed to surge ahead with 70358 votes and a margin of 50000 votes congresss k p singh who tried his luck again could get only 22000 votesin the 2005 polls the first assembly election after jharkhand was carved out of bihar das was the state bjp chief the saffron party managed to get 30 of the 81 seats and das retained his