A senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, said to be a contender for parliamentary elections, was shot dead at point-blank range in Latehar’s Barwadih block on Sunday evening triggering uproar in the opposition cadre over the deteriorating law and order situation in UPA-led Jharkhand.

Two armed assailants shot dead Jaivardhan Singh, a district general secretary of BJP in Latehar, near a Pragya Kendra in Barwadih at around 7.30pm on Sunday, police said.

“Prima facie, it looks like a criminal incident. He sustained one bullet shot in the neck and died on the spot,” Latehar Superintendent of Police (SP) Prashant Anand said. “We are investigating the case. It would be too early to comment on the motive behind the murder,” he added.

A highly placed source in Latehar police said that Singh was a contractor and he may have developed rivalry with local gangs in the course of his work.

The head of the Pragya Kendra, one of the eyewitnesses in the case, told the police that the perpetrators casually walked up to Singh minutes after he came to the locality, shot him dead and fired in the air as they fled.

The incident has triggered hue and cry in the BJP fold with senior leaders questioning the Hemant Soren-led Government’s efforts to keep such crimes at bay. A delegation of BJP, headed by the party’s state general secretary Pradeep Verma, will seek an appointment with Director General of Police (DGP) MV Rao on Monday to voice their growing concerns.

BJP spokesperson Pratul Shahdeo on Sunday said that Left Wing Extremism incidents and crime incidents were on the rise in Jharkhand in the past six months. “The government has been reduced to being a mere spectator to such incidents lately,” he said.