Soren's sops make Jharkhand battle difficult for BJP

Feedback sent by local agencies and state leadership to Delhi has indicated that the BJP may find it difficult to come to power in the Jharkhand Assembly elections that are scheduled to be held next month.

- ABHINANDAN MISHRA

As per reports, the slew of financial schemes that the Hemant Soren led I.N.D.I.A bloc government in the state has been executing since coming to power, aided by a few new ones that have been announced in the past few months have created a favourable situation for the ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM).

On top of that, Soren being arrested and kept in prison for five months on charges of corruption and the failure of the investigative agencies to present strong proof that would have denied his bail application, has been successfully converted by Hemant and his wife Kalpana as an instance of "atrocity" on tribals by the BJP government in a state where more than one quarter of the entire population is from the tribal community.

The JMM leadership's accusations that the Central government is refusing to release the payment for political reasons of more than Rs 1.36 lakh crore to Jharkhand that the state government is liable to receive from the coal companies, too is resonating on the ground.

Recently, Chief Minister Hemant Soren had written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging the Central government to release dues to the tune of Rs 136,042 crore pending as of March 2022 payable to the state exchequer from the coal companies operating in Jharkhand.

In the letter, Soren had stated that he was not asking for special status like the BJP-allied states, nor was he asking for a bigger share of the Union Budget, rather the demand is only for justice, not for privileges and claimed that when he demanded the rights of Jharkhandis, he was put in jail. He had written a similar letter in March 2022.

In the Assembly of 81 members, the JMM presently has 25 members, while the Congress has 17 MLAs.

As per the survey done by I.N.D.I.A bloc, while the Congress' tally might come down by 3-4 seats if they do not change the incumbent MLAs, the JMM's share will cross 30 seats.