'Never seen such a tough election...don't think I ever will'

Jharkhand is set to welcome back chief minister Hemant Soren for a second term.

- Sunetra Choudhury

Speaking to HT after the win became certain on Saturday afternoon, Soren, who spent 149 days between January 31 and June 28 in jail, credited his wife Kalpana and his team for the highest tally any alliance has managed here since 2000.

What was behind your very clear victory?

We did our homework and set our targets. We knew that it was going to be a very tough fight. So we set out with our team to do a lot of ground work. It was great team work and we delivered the message that we wanted to. You saw how we fared in the Lok Sabha polls (the JMM-Congress alliance won five of 14 seats); if I had been out of jail, we would have done so much better. At the time, (my wife) Kalpana Soren worked as a one-man army and this time there were two of us.

Do you think sending you to jail turned out to be a turning point?