Champai Soren announces onset of Jharkhand poll fever
Image credit X.com @ChampaiSoren
Champai Soren shares prelude to churn out in JMM
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, August 18: Former Jharkhand Chief Minister Champai Soren is hogging the national limelight. The Election Commission is yet to announce the Assembly poll dates for Jharkhand.
Champai Soren announced the onset of poll fever in Jharkhand. In a long post on X, formerly Twitter, Champai Soren set out a prelude to his imminent political move.
The Jharkhand poll script appears to be at the drafting stage. The incumbent Chief Minister, Hemant Soren, showed nonchalance at his party colleague’s act in the national capital.
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“It is in the hand of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to decide when to hold Assembly elections in Jharkhand. The BJP has the money power to break other parties,” Hemant Soren said on Sunday. The chief minister was speaking in Godda at an official function.
Champai Soren is understood not to have directly flown from Ranchi to New Delhi. His detour to other state capitals set the rumour mill running full speed.
The BJP apparatchik had expressed sorrow when Hemant Soren had replaced Champai Soren in the hot seat in Ranchi after getting bail in the ‘office for profit’ case. The BJP’s Jharkhand co-incharge and the Chief Minister of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, had expressed anger at the manner in which Champai Soren was removed from the post of the CM.
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The BJP’s tribal discomfort in Jharkhand was revealed in the outcome of the Lok Sabha elections. The BJP had lost all the five reserved Lok Sabha seats for the scheduled tribes in Jharkhand.
Additionally, Hemant Soren is playing the tribal card to the hilt. A sharp consolidation of the tribal vote base along with the votes of non-BJP electoral base can guarantee poll safety for Hemant Soren.
The BJP, thus, is in a dire need to gain a new tribal face in Jharkhand. The old faces of the BJP – Babulal Marandi and Arjun Munda – are being seen too weak to stop the surge of the Opposition bloc, the Indian National Developmental and Inclusive Alliance (INDIA).
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Champai Soren shared a long list of instances of his humiliation at the hands of Hemant Soren. Champai Soren is a founding member of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM).
His list of grievances included that while “the Chief Minister has the right to call a meeting of the Legislative Party, but he is not even told the agenda of the meeting”. This was in reference to the meeting called where he had to offer resignation from the post of the chief minister after Hemant Soren was released from the Ranchi Central Jail.
“Can there be anything more humiliating in democracy than someone else cancelling the programs of a Chief Minister,” lamented Champai Soren. This again was done reportedly as a prelude for the legislative party meeting of the JMM to elect Hemant Soren as the leader.
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“When the party’s central executive meeting has not been held for years and one-sided orders are passed, then to whom would I go and express my pain? In this party, I am counted among the senior members, the rest are juniors and the supremo who is senior to me is no longer active in politics due to health, then what option did I have,” Champai Soren said in his long post.
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