Jharkhand: How costly might Hemant Soren’s arrest prove to be?

Was the Enforcement Directorate’s decision to arrest Hemant Soren on 31 January a costly mistake?

The BJP might well regret that hasty step. Long before his arrest, it had orchestrated a media trial with selective leaks on Soren’s alleged money laundering activities and land deals. The ED questioned him and followed up with a summons for interrogation.

Eventually, Hemant Soren submitted his resignation at Raj Bhavan, where the ED arrested him. It took only six months for a single-judge bench of the Jharkhand high court to release him on bail, based on the gaping loopholes in the ED’s charge sheet against him. Arguably, the BJP’s next mistake was to assure caretaker chief minister Champai Soren that the party would keep him on as CM after the assembly election—if he joined the BJP, along with other Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) legislators.

Hemant Soren had declared he would devote his time to the party organisation and preparing for the assembly election after his release, with Champai Soren continuing as caretaker chief minister.

Getting wind of the alleged ‘deal’ struck by the BJP, the JMM moved swiftly. Soren was summoned and ordered to resign on the spot. Humiliated, he declared he would retire from active politics. Instead, he formally joined the BJP but all on his ownsome.

No JMM MLA followed. Another unintended consequence of Hemant Soren’s incarceration was the emergence of his wife, Kalpana Soren, as a popular leader. She jumped into active politics, contested and won a byelection to the Assembly. She campaigned tirelessly in the Lok Sabha election, helping the JMM win three of the five Lok Sabha seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes in the state.

Much sought after as a political speaker, especially among women, she has eclipsed the likes of Sita Soren, her estranged sister-in-law, and Geeta Koda, wife of former chief minister Madhu Koda, both pitted against her by the BJP. With the sting of corruption charges somewhat blunted, arresting Hemant Soren appears to have been a blessing in disguise for the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha.

Electoral pros and cons

The BJP is going into the assembly election, due in November–December, with plenty of baggage. Since its rout in 2019, its attempt to dislodge the JMM-led coalition government has failed.

The JMM is undisputedly stronger in 2024 than in 2019 and the ‘sympathy’ factor is working in favour of Hemant and Kalpana Soren. The previous BJP government headed by Raghubar Das (2014–2019) was the first government to have completed its full fiveyear term in the state, when the JMM was organisationally a lot weaker.

Following the decline in PM Modi’s popularity and the Lok Sabha results, the BJP looks on a sticky wicket. However, while the Soren couple seem to be carrying the entire burden of the campaign on their own shoulders, the BJP has pressed its heavy armoury into action. Over the last three months, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma paid 16 visits to the state. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already addressed two rallies in Jamshedpur and Hazaribagh.

BJP heavies like Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh and Shivraj Singh Chouhan have also been regular visitors.

While the Congress undertook a Jan Samvad Yatra to counter the BJP’s Parivartan Yatra, party workers are clearly waiting for Mallikarjun Kharge and Jairam Ramesh (who has a Jharkhand connection) to campaign in the state, apart from Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi.

With the BJP having been in the saddle for the longest period since Jharkhand came into existence in November 2000, it’s more like a party of former chief ministers, namely Babulal Marandi, Arjun Munda and Champai Soren.

With another former chief minister Raghubar Das cooling his heels in Raj Bhavan, Bhubaneswar while itching to return to state politics, Marandi’s task is cut out. He must defend precisely those successors he had publicly criticised. A promise is a promise. Or is it? I n the run up to the assembly election, Modi’s Guarantees have been replaced by ‘Paanch Prann’ or five resolves.

The JMM has pointed out that the BJP has not yet implemented its promise to provide LPG cylinders at Rs 500 in Rajasthan, 10 months after forming the government. Now it has repeated that promise in Jharkhand, with the added bonus of two free cylinders. Can LPG be subsidised to this extent by any state government?

Getting voters to fill in forms and submit details for future payments had been declared a corrupt practice by the ECI during the Lok Sabha elections. This has not prevented the BJP, however, from aggressively getting women to sign forms for the monthly dole of Rs 2,100 as part of Gogo Didi Yojana or Maa Bahin Yojana to counter the JMM’s Maiyya Samman Yojana under which the state government is paying a thousand rupees every month to women above the age of 18.

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling that states are entitled to their fair share of royalty on minerals with retrospective effect has given the state government a shot in the arm.

It claims the Union government owes Jharkhand Rs 1.36 lakh crore in arrears. The CM says this is no gift, yet the Union government is delaying it. Meanwhile, why hasn’t the Union government extended benefits under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana to over six lakh eligible beneficiaries in the state, wondered Congress leader Jairam Ramesh.

While the official portal listed more than 10 lakh beneficiaries in the year 2022–23, only four lakh homes were sanctioned, and more recently, around two lakh beneficiaries were arbitrarily removed from the list by the ministry of rural development.

In solidarity with Palestine Poet, journalist and activist Jacinta Kerketta has been in the news recently for refusing to accept the 2024 Room to Read Young Author Award, jointly awarded by USAID (US Agency for International Development) and Room to Read India Trust for her children’s poetry collection, Jirhul, published earlier this year by Jugnu Prakashan, Bhopal.

Discovering that Room to Read India Trust partners Boeing in a literacy programme (flagged off last year by then Union minister Smriti Irani), Kerketta questioned the dubious nature of the claim to ‘care for children’ when “the same weapons are destroying the world of children”. Boeing, as its website indicates, has been associated with the Israeli army for ‘75 years’.

“I saw that Room to Read India Trust is also associated with Boeing for children’s education; when children were being killed in Palestine, the Trust in India was collaborating with Boeing, whose relationship with Israel is linked to [the] arms business… how can the arms business and care for children continue simultaneously when the world of children is being destroyed by the same weapons?” she wondered.

“I see many people in India remain silent about the genocide in Palestine. Just as there is hatred for minorities within the country, similarly there is no sympathy for the people of Palestine. As a poet and writer, this troubles me,” she told the Independent. “When the elders are not playing a significant role in creating a better world for children, what value does this award truly hold?” Kerketta said.

This isn’t the first time she has taken a principled stance. Last year she refused a literary award for her book of Hindi poetry, Ishwar Aur Bazar, dedicated to the Dalit and Adivasi people of Niyamgiri in Odisha, who have been opposing bauxite mining in the region. More power to her pen and her kind.

Sugna’s wife and children Will this time not starve to death.

They will take their own lives instead. For dying of hunger, they know too well, Stirs up no storms, does not sell.

A suicide, on the other hand, Guarantees their corpse will make headlines, And probes into the whys and wherefores

Will lead them to many more doors With stoves unlit and ovens gone cold.