SUMAN K SHRIVASTAVA
Ranchi, Jan. 2: In a mind game among Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, the BJP and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) going on for over a year, the former has blinked first.
Soren has called a meeting of the INDI Alliance MLAs tomorrow to chalk out a strategy to deal with the emerging political crisis ahead of the seven-day deadline set by the ED.
Speculations are rife that he will name his wife Kalpana Soren to succeed him if he resigns in the face of the ED’s actions for defying as many as seven summonses.
It was said to be the first significant step to dealing with the political crisis after he exhausted all legal options to thwart the ED action ever since it served the first summons in August last year.
ED deadline
The ED deadline to record Soren’s statement in the Ranchi land scam case under Section 50 of the PMLA Act ends on January 5.
Soren is said to have taken the step to win the MLAs’ support for his successor after the ED, in its seventh and last summons on December 29, clarified that failure to comply with it would lead to the presumption that he was intentionally evading the investigation and wilfully disobeying it, thus setting the stage for a coercive action to interrogate him.
Also read: Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren ready to join ED probe after ‘proper summons’
JMM MLA Sarfaraz Ahmed has already vacated the Gandey Assembly seat where Kalpana Soren can contest and become a member of the State Assembly.
There are two possibilities. A political analyst says that either he quits and names his wife Kalpana Soren as his successor or gets himself authorised by the MLAs to name his successor when an occasion arises to resign from the chief minister’s post.
“There is no question of any opposition from any MLA either from his family (Sita Soren and Basant Soren) or outside the JMM’s first family. His family members will certainly remain united in this hour of crisis,” said a friend of the Soren family.
He added that the alliance partners, Congress and RJD, have no choice but to support him.
BJP spanner
Meanwhile, BJP MP Nishikant Dubey has thrown a spanner into the JMM plan, raising questions over the possibility of holding byelections in Gandey, citing several Supreme Court and the Bombay High Court judgements.
So, the ball will be in the court of Governor CP Radhakrishnan after Hemant Soren resigns. He will undoubtedly take legal opinion on the possibility of Kalpana Soren contesting bye-elections from Gandey, which the State Assembly declared vacated on December 31 2023.
Political power game
In a psychological game, the BJP, in a way, has forced Hemant Soren to open all his cards in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections.
Resort politics
Soon after Hemant Soren faced disqualification from the Jharkhand Assembly in August 2022 in the stone mining lease case, he shifted his MLAs first to Latratu dam in Jharkhand and then to a Raipur resort in Chhattisgarh.
1932 domicile
“Soon after that, Soren called a special session of the Jharkhand Assembly and got two ‘illegal’ bills passed. The BJP, knowing the fate of these bills too well, also supported them. These included reserving government jobs for the locals defined based on the 1932 ‘khatiyan’ (land records). The second bill was related to increasing reservations for all sections in government jobs up to 77 per cent,” he pointed out.
The original domicile bill, tabled by the government, did not link jobs to the domicile status. It was amended on a CPI (ML) MLA Vinod Singh’s proposal. “Had the original bill for defining a domicile been approved, the Governor would not have returned it, describing it as ‘unconstitutional’. But the bill was amended at the insistence of an MLA who supported his government,” pointed out a political watcher.
It is another matter that the Jharkhand Assembly has re-adopted the same domicile bill.
Sarkar Apke dwar
Again, the chief minister launched the third phase of “Sarkar Apke dwar”, a public outreach programme, in December’s first week after he apprehended that the ED may take action against him after assembly elections in five states were over.
“So, the BJP has forced him to open all his cards. The BJP does not want him to be arrested by the ED as it may generate sympathy among tribals for him,” said another political analyst.
“Also, the ED would like to record his statement only and file a chargesheet in the land scam. He will be forced to resign if the court takes its cognizance,” he added.
“In the absence of any reply to the questions on corruption, Hemant Soren plays a victim card whenever he is in trouble. He plays to his strengths by returning the focus to his tribal roots,” he pointed out.
