Arrested, But Not Cornered

Hemant Soren had seen the writing on the wall. Before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested him on the night of January 31 for alleged money laundering related to the purported possession of a plot of land in Ranchi, the Jharkhand CM had finalized the course of post-crisis political action.

- Amitabh Srivastava

 A day before, he held a meeting of ruling coalition legislators from the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), the Congress, and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) at the CM’s office. The solitary agenda was to pick a successor in case the ED arrested him.

Though Soren initially wanted his wife Kalpana Soren to succeed him, he finally agreed on his second choice, old loyalist Champai Soren, 68, for several reasons. Soren’s sister-in-law and JMM legislator Sita Soren’s opposition to Kalpana’s candidature was a minor irritant, but the bigger reason was the possibility of ED action against Kalpana too. Also, she is not an MLA, and having a bypoll ahead of the assembly election due late this year may have been iffy. So, Soren had already resigned to this eventuality before submitting his own resignation to Governor C.P. Radhakrishnan at Raj Bhavan on January 31.