Sudivya Sonu: The JMM strategist behind Kalpana Soren’s Gandey political debut
SUMAN K SHRIVASTAVA RANCHI, September 6: When former Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on January 31,…
Source: Hindustan Times (File image)
SUMAN K SHRIVASTAVA
RANCHI, September 6: When former Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on January 31, 2024, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) faced an immediate political challenge: how to keep its organisation energised and project a credible political face while its executive president remained in jail.
That was the moment when Sudivya Kumar Sonu, the JMM’s Giridih MLA and a close Hemant Soren aide, emerged as one of the important organisers behind the political transition that eventually brought Kalpana Soren into electoral politics.
Contemporaneous reports and later accounts of the 2024 election campaign indicate that Sudivya was not merely a campaign participant. He was involved in the groundwork around Kalpana’s entry into the Gandey contest and headed the JMM’s core campaign committee for her by-election campaign.
From political uncertainty to Kalpana’s entry
Kalpana Soren had largely remained outside electoral politics before 2024. Her political entry came against the backdrop of Hemant Soren’s arrest and the uncertainty surrounding the JMM leadership.
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The JMM eventually decided to field her from Gandey after sitting MLA Sarfaraz Ahmad vacated the seat. The constituency was strategically important: it was a non-reserved seat in Giridih district and geographically close to Sonu’s own Giridih constituency.
A later account of the 2024 election campaign credited Sudivya with recommending Gandey as the constituency for Kalpana. The report described the decision as part of a broader strategy to give her an electoral platform from which she could emerge as a significant political leader.
The choice proved consequential. Kalpana won the Gandey bypoll and subsequently emerged as one of the JMM’s most prominent campaigners.
Sudivya Sonu’s role went beyond the candidate’s campaign
The importance of Sonu’s role was also reflected in a May 2024 report by The Telegraph, which identified him as a close Hemant Soren aide and said he was heading the core-campaigning committee for Kalpana’s Gandey bypoll campaign.
This placed Sudivya at the intersection of several tasks — coordinating the party organisation, working with local cadres, managing the campaign structure and ensuring that Kalpana’s relatively new political presence translated into votes.
Kalpana herself spent an intensive campaign period travelling through the constituency. Reports said she visited more than two-thirds of Gandey’s 66 panchayats and held a large number of meetings, reaching out not only to traditional JMM supporters but also to communities beyond the party’s core tribal base.
Sudivya publicly helped build that narrative. In an interview during the campaign, he argued that the BJP had expected Hemant Soren’s arrest to leave the political field open, but Kalpana had instead emerged as a strong challenger. He also pointed to her appeal among women across communities.
Turning Hemant’s arrest into a political narrative
One of the campaign’s central themes was the political and personal impact of Hemant Soren’s arrest.
Kalpana repeatedly spoke about her husband, the circumstances surrounding his arrest and what the JMM portrayed as an attack on Jharkhand’s political and constitutional rights. Her campaign gradually transformed her from Hemant Soren’s wife into a political communicator in her own right.
The strategy also allowed the JMM to combine sympathy for Hemant, the Soren family’s political legacy and Kalpana’s personal identity.
By the end of the campaign, she had held dozens of public meetings, interacted with tribal groups, women and village communities and developed a distinct political persona.
The final roadshow before polling drew participation from several INDIA bloc leaders, including Sudivya, underlining the organisational support behind her campaign.
The Gandey gamble paid off
Kalpana won the Gandey bypoll by 27,149 votes, defeating BJP candidate Dilip Kumar Verma.
The victory changed the political equation inside the JMM.
What began as an emergency response to Hemant Soren’s imprisonment had produced a new political face for the party. Kalpana quickly became a prominent JMM and INDIA bloc campaigner and was subsequently given a much larger role in the 2024 Assembly election campaign. She emerged as a key party leader whose presence was sought across the state.
From Gandey experiment to state-wide campaign
Sudivya’s role did not end with the bypoll.
A later assessment of the 2024 Assembly election described him as one of the strategists involved in the JMM’s wider electoral planning and credited him with helping shape the party’s campaign and candidate-related decisions. That account specifically linked him to Kalpana’s political rise and described him as an important strategist in the party’s successful 2024 campaign.
The results gave some weight to that assessment. Kalpana retained Gandey in the November 2024 Assembly election with 1,19,372 votes, while Sonu won neighbouring Giridih with 94,042 votes. The JMM itself won 34 Assembly seats, its highest tally in the election.
The political partnership behind Kalpana’s emergence
In retrospect, Kalpana Soren’s political debut was not simply the story of a leader stepping into politics after her husband’s arrest.
It was also a story of organisation, constituency selection and campaign management.
Hemant Soren’s imprisonment created the political vacuum. Kalpana supplied the new face. The JMM cadre provided the organisational machinery. And Sudivya, as a close Hemant aide and the campaign committee head for the Gandey contest, appears to have played an important coordinating role in converting that political transition into an electoral campaign.
His most consequential contribution may have been recognising early that Kalpana needed more than a symbolic role. She needed an electoral constituency, an organisational structure and sustained exposure to voters.
Gandey became that launchpad — and the victory there transformed Kalpana Soren from the wife of an imprisoned chief minister into one of the JMM’s most recognisable political faces.
More than a political colleague to Hemant Soren
His stature within the JMM was reflected in Hemant Soren’s emotional tribute following his death.
Calling Sonu his “elder brother and dear friend”, Hemant said his death had left a void in his life that words could not express. He recalled Sonu as someone who had stood firmly by him during difficult times, offering affection, guidance and support.
Hemant also remembered Sonu’s association with the Jharkhand movement and his loyalty to the JMM, describing his commitment to the cause of Jharkhand’s identity, rights and dignity.
For Hemant, therefore, Sonu was not merely a senior party colleague or an elected representative. He was part of the political circle that had remained close to him through some of the most difficult phases of his career.
