Jharkhand: The lost labours of Himanta Biswa Sarma

Himanta Biswa Sarma, the Assam chief minister who is jointly in charge of the BJP’s campaign in Jharkhand, is busy swatting questions away.

Asked about the sudden exit of at least seven BJP leaders from the party, he said, “I told them they were all very good but unfortunately, I did not have the space to accommodate them… I wasn’t aware that JMM is so short of candidates. Had I known, I would have sent them more candidates from the BJP.”

Sarma suggested these were all second or third-rank leaders. Not so: Louis Marandi, who defeated Hemant Soren in 2014, was a cabinet minister and a party vice-president. Kunal Sarangi was a former chief whip. Satyanand Jha Batul was a former minister who left the BJP along with former MLAs Ganesh Mahali and Misri Soren.

Sarangi’s parting shot was scathing. He derided the culture of sycophancy in the BJP and said the only leaders who flourished were those who could do ‘Ganesh parikrama’ every day, are steeped in corruption and cannot speak straight.

He did not deny Biswa Sarma’s statement that he had gone to Guwahati and Odisha to meet him but added, “I resigned from the BJP four months back and told them my reasons… there was no opportunity for people like me to grow and hence I returned to the JMM.”

In the year 2023–24, Jharkhand spent Rs 3,639 crore on these social welfare schemes, to which the Union government contributed a measly Rs 406 crore.

Jharkhand is also one of the few states which has reduced the age restriction for such pensions from 60 years to 50 years for Dalits, women and tribals. The number of pensioners in 2024 has gone up to 40 lakh from just five lakh in 2019, when Raghubar Das demitted from office.

Hemant is certainly proving to be a better administrator than his father Shibu Soren, wilier, and a faster learner. He has also transformed the JMM into a smoother battle-readier party. Unfazed by the stream of Union ministers and BJP chief ministers flying into the state to campaign, Soren Jr. has been meeting fire with fire.

“You see these ministers and chief ministers camping here because they are eyeing our minerals. You will soon see more outsiders as polling day approaches… beware of these smooth-talking enemies of Jharkhand,” he said this week. The ‘outsider’ tag makes both Adivasis and non-Adivasis see red. Soren has also put the BJP on the backfoot by daring it to name at least one of its candidates or leaders who had ‘fought’ for the creation of Jharkhand as a separate state.

Barely a month ago, the resource-rich BJP seemed to have an edge. Not any longer.

Neither Louis Marandi nor Sarangi figured in the JMM’s first list of 35 candidates — the party plans to contest 41 of the 81 seats — but the fact that Hemant Soren lost no time in inducting them into the party and designating them as star campaigners showed a degree of savvy that people do not generally associate with him.

A growing disconnect between leaders and ground realities in the BJP seems to be responsible for the disarray in the party. Sarangi pointed out, “In East Singhbhum, the BJP is contesting four seats… three of them have gone to the son, wife and daughter-in-law of three former chief ministers… what moral right does the BJP have to lecture others on dynasty?”

He was referring to Arjun Munda’s wife, Raghubar Das’ daughter-in-law and Madhu Koda’s wife. Madhu Koda, who has done jail time and is still facing trial in corruption cases filed by the CBI and the ED, has shared a platform with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The BJP has also fielded another former chief minister Champai Soren and his son Lalit Kumar Das. The son of Odisha governor Raghubar Das was possibly denied a ticket because he had gained considerable notoriety when his father was chief minister. Besides, he was accused of assaulting a Raj Bhavan employee in Bhubaneswar because he was apparently unhappy about the vehicle sent to pick him up.

Two of the major planks of Himanta Biswa Sarma’s attack on the JMM- Congress combine — pariwarvaad (nepotism) and bhrastachar (corruption)— thus fell flat. The third plank of the fear of infiltrators from Bangladesh conducting ‘love and land jihad’ does not seem to have worked either, partly because in most of the tribes, women do not inherit land.

The proposition that Muslims from Bangladesh were marrying Santhal women to grab Adivasi land was never going to cut any ice. Nor does Sarma’s poaching of Sita Soren and Champai Soren from the JMM and Geeta Koda from the Congress seem to be paying off.

The campaign against Hemant Soren’s corruption and his subsequent arrest fell through once Soren secured bail and emerged stronger.

A duel between Hemant and Himanta

Jail ka jawab jeet se denge. Ek hi nara, Hemant dobara. Har ek baar, Hemant sarkar. Hemant hai toh himmat hai.

These are some of the slogans the party has coined for the assembly election, scheduled over two phases on 13 and 20 November. The slogans, the aggressive social media campaigns that draw attention to Babulal Marandi’s broadsides against the BJP when he was leading the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha and attacking the BJP for fielding 35 turncoats, and inducting a steady stream of workers and leaders from other parties — the JMM appears to be a very different animal from what it was even five years ago.

Unlike the Raghubar Das-led BJP government in the state, Hemant Soren had to contend with a hostile Union government and sustained attempts by the BJP to lure his MLAs away. He survived, and was lucky to have the money laundering case against him heard by a high court judge who tore the ED’s charge sheet to shreds. The incarceration not only enhanced his stature and earned him sympathy, it also helped him mature.

He challenged the BJP to explain why the Union government and the Raj Bhavan have been sitting over unanimous assembly resolutions to grant Sarna dharma the status of a separate religion distinct from Hinduism. Another state government decision to link land deeds of 1932 to trace ancestry and domicile has also been stalled.

Why did the BJP reduce OBC reservation to 14 per cent in the state, which the JMM-led government has promised to raise to 27 per cent? These are some of the difficult questions he has been asking about the BJP’s record in Jharkhand, comparing Raghubar Das’s five-year-term as CM with his own. Even before he was imprisoned, Soren had set new standards of governance. Jharkhand, though one of the poorest states in the country, is among the few that pays old age pensions, disability pensions etc. from its own revenues.