SUMAN K SHRIVASTAVA
Ranchi, February 1: The 38 JMM and Congress MLAs today deferred their plan to shift to Hyderabad due to prevailing bad weather conditions here.
They had boarded a chartered plane, but it could not take off due to poor visibility.
Congress MLA Deepika Pandey said we were deboarded after the ATC did not give its green signal to the plane to take off.
Why are they being shifted?
With Governor CP Radhakrishnan not hurrying to invite Champai Soren to form a government, the JMM-Congress MLAs were being shifted to Hyderabad, the capital of Telangana ruled by the Congress.
The move was taken to stave off the Bhartiya Janata Party’s (BJP) possible poaching attempt amid the buzz that the Governor is weighing all options before inviting Champai Soren.
According to sources, five members, including Champai Soren, Pradeep Yadav, Badal Patralekh, Satyanand Bhokta and Vinod Singh, were supposed to stay in Jharkhand to take a call in case the governor invited them to form a government.
Notably, Champai Soren met the Governor today again and urged him to invite the JMM combine leader to form the government. The governor, in turn, assured him that he will take a call on the issue soon and will let him know about his decision.
The rest of the 38 MLAs were being shifted to Hyderabad.
They had mulled to shift to West Bengal by road, given the inclement weather. However, they finally decided to take shelter in a Congress-ruled state, Telangana, after the visibility improved in the evening.
A senior Congress leader said that we apprehend that the BJP will now indulge in poaching our MLAs to create a constitutional crisis in the State and pave the way for the President’s rule.
“So, we have decided to send our MLAs to move to a friendly state,” he added.
Raipur resort
Earlier, the ruling coalition had shifted its MLAs to Raipur in 2022 when the then Governor Ramesh Bais was set to announce his decision disqualifying Hemant Soren in an office-of-profit case.
The ruling coalition has 47 MLAs in the 81-member Assembly, but only 43 MLAs are said to have signed the letter of support submitted to the Governor.
The ruling coalition believes that the BJP may attempt to poach MLAs from it to topple the government like Maharashtra, and there is a need to ringfence the legislators in a safe haven.
