Posting a detailed message on X on Sunday in the midst of swirling speculation that he is about to join the Bharatiya Janata Party, former Jharkhand Chief Minister Champai Soren made it amply clear that he is on his way out of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha. He said all his options are open, which includes taking retirement from politics, forming a new party or joining another party. This declaration bears immense significance and promises to complicate the electoral dynamics in the tribal state right before the assembly elections will be held.
Soren is a JMM veteran, known to be close to the party's founding leader Shibu Soren and identified as Shibu's compatriot in their struggle to form a separate state of Jharkhand. Besides this, the 67-year-old has a mass following of his own amongst the tribal population of the state and is known as 'Jharkhand's tiger'.
The veteran leader was viewed as a dependable option for the chief minister's post by Hemant Soren when he had to resign from the top job in January this year, as he faced arrest by the Enforcement Directorate in a case relating to alleged irregularities in a land deal. And now, in a curious turn of events, after Hemant is out of jail and back in the saddle, Soren has emerged as a big challenge for the JMM and for the INDIA alliance ahead of assembly polls.
Soren, who was chief minister for five months and had to make way for Hemant after he was released from jail over a month back, is known to have been deeply hurt at the manner in which he was made to step down. As Hemant took charge as chief minister again, a big challenge was to ensure that Soren was mollified. He has considerable clout in the Kolhan region of the state which has 14 Assembly seats. Soren was sworn in as a minister in the new Hemant cabinet. However, as the latest developments show, the JMM veteran has decided to go to the people about his “humiliation” and “ill-treatment” after Hemant came out of jail and made a comeback as chief minister.
An argument Soren had made in the meeting of the JMM legislature party in June, where it was decided that Hemant should again be the chief minister was that replacing him at a time when the state was about to get into election mode would send an extremely wrong message to the tribal population of the state, and would expose the ruling alliance to attacks from political rivals.
Soren had then said he was a tribal leader with a considerable standing. And now, Soren has articulated through his social media post that he was deeply hurt at the “humiliating” manner in which he was replaced as chief minister. The long post that runs into several paragraphs is intended to be a message to the tribals in the state and he has sought to impress upon them that the present leadership of the JMM has humiliated a senior tribal leader.
Soren, who has had multiple terms as an MLA, has fashioned himself as a leader with humble origins. It is popular lore that he once worked in the fields along with his father in the remote Jilingora village in the Seraikela-Kharsawan district.
The JMM veteran who held the fort when Hemant was arrested by the ED is now a big challenge for him right before the elections.