Former Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren to preside over INDIA bloc meeting

Former Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, who was released on bail in a money laundering case last week after the state high court observed that he was not guilty, is scheduled to preside over a crucial meeting of INDIA bloc legislators on Wednesday. Soren was released from jail on June 28 after five months in the case related to an alleged land scam. 

A party source told news agency PTI that a change of guard in the state is possible. “This meeting is crucial. All the legislators of the ruling alliance will assemble here at 11 am,” the source said. This comes after the sudden cancellation of all important programmes of Chief Minister Champai Soren, including the distribution of appointment letters to 1,500 selected teachers. Champai Soren had taken oath as the chief minister after Hemant Soren’s arrest.

A Congress MLA said that they were being asked by the party to attend a meeting of the INDIA bloc legislators on Wednesday in view of the Jharkhand assembly elections. The meeting is expected to chalk out the strategy for the polls that are due in the state later this year. 

Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) spokesperson Manoj Pandey said that the meeting would be regarding the political developments in the state. 

Apart from Hemant Soren, the meeting will be attended by his brother and minister Basant Soren, wife Kalpana Soren, Congress’s Jharkhand in-charge Ghulam Ahmad Mir and its state president Rajesh Thakur. 

Soren, last month, said that BJP will be wiped out of the state. Addressing JMM workers, Soren said that there would be a “revolt against those who plotted the conspiracy” to confine him in jail. “Time has come to put the last nail in BJP’s coffin. In coming days, the BJP will be wiped out from Jharkhand,” the JMM executive president said.

“It has come to my knowledge that they are making plans to prepone assembly elections … I dare them to conduct the elections any day they wish to…the BJP’s dream of winning assembly elections in Jharkhand will be ‘Mungerilal ke haseen sapne’…the BJP is naming tribals as CMs in states but they are just rubber stamps,” the JMM leader said.