Breaking: Speculations rife as Jharkhand JMM MLA Sarfaraj Ahmed quits Assembly  

SUMAN K SHRIVASTAVA

Ranchi, Jan. 1: In a significant political development, JMM MLA from Gandey Sarfaraj Ahmed has resigned from the Assembly.

The Assembly secretariat today notified his resignation, saying the Gandey Assembly seat has fallen vacant since December 31 2023.

He represented Gandey in 1980 and 2009 as Congress MLA and in 2019 as JMM MLA.

Ahmed, a former Congressman, had joined the JMM before the 2019 Assembly elections and won the seat for the JMM.

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He was not available to comment on his sudden decision. The JMM leaders are also tight-lipped on the issue. “Only Sarfaraj Ahmed can say anything in this regard,” said JMM core committee member Vinod Pandey.

So, with no official explanation behind Ahmed’s abrupt resignation, the political twist had set speculations in motion.

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First, political analysts ruled out Ahmed’s differences with the JMM leadership as a reason for his sudden resignation. “Had it been so, he would have quit the party, not his assembly membership,” they said. Also, any dispute with the JMM leadership was not in the public domain.

Return to Congress

There could be another reason. “Ahmed might be planning to return to the Congress. So, he sacrificed one year of his tenure to show his old loyalty to Congress. The assembly election is due in Jharkhand by the end of 2024,” said a political watcher.

Plan B

The third reason being speculated in the political circle is that he has vacated the seat for Kalpana Soren, wife of Chief Minister Hemant Soren, to contest the byelections.

The chief minister might be getting ready for a long political battle and putting in place his plan B in case he concedes to the ED summons, said a political analyst.

In its seventh and last summons issued on December 29, the ED has given him seven days to record his statement in the land scam.  However, the deadline of two days set by the agency to fix the time, date and place where he wanted to be interrogated has expired.

“Since Kalpana Soren, hailing from Odisha, is said to be not entitled to get the ST privilege to contest elections from a reserved seat in Jharkhand, Gandey, a general seat, might be a safe constituency for her,” he said.

Notably, the membership of Jama MLA Sita Soren, Hemant Soren’s sister-in-law, is already under challenge on this ground as she, too, was not born in Jharkhand.

“If it happens, the byelections to the Gandey seat, in all likelihood, may be held along with the Lok Sabha elections in April- May.  Sarfaraj Ahmed might have been promised a Rajya Sabha seat,” said a JMM leader.

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