Ranchi, May 16 (IANS) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was leading in eight of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in Jharkhand early Saturday afternoon while votes were being counted. Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) chief and former chief minister Shibu Soren was trailing behind his BJP rival in the Dumka parliamentary seat.
By 1 p.m., prominent BJP candidates who were leading included former chief minister Arjun Munda from Jamshedpur, Yashwant Sinha from Hazaribagh, Sunil Soren from Dumka and Karia Munda from Khuti.
BJP had won only one seat in the 2004 Lok sabha polls and it lost the lone seat in 2006 when party MP and former chief minister Babulal Marandi quit the party.
Independent candidate and former assembly speaker Inder Singh Namdhari was leading from Chatra Lok Sabha seat. Namdhari is indirectly supported by the BJP against Janata Dal-United (JD-U) candidate Arjun Kumar Yadav.
The leads indicate that the Congress and the JMM are losing a majority of their seats in the state. In 2004, the Congress had won six seats, JMM had four and RJD two.
The Congress is currently leading in one seat and the JMM in two. Jharkhand Vikas Morcha-Prajatantrik (JVM-P) president and former chief minister Babulal Marandi is leading from the Koderma seat.
This time, all four former chief ministers were in the poll fray and barring Shibu Soren, the others - Marandi, Munda of BJP and Madhu Koda (Independent) - were leading respectively from Koderma, Jamshedpur and Singbhum.
Two central ministers of the Congress - Subodh Kant Sahay and Rameshwar Oraon - were trailing from Ranchi and Lohardagga seats respectively.
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