Ranchi, Oct 9 (PTI) The ruling JMM has put up massive billboards in Ranchi demanding payment of Rs 1.36 lakh crore allegedly due to the state in the form of coal royalties.
The hoardings came up barely a fortnight after Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren shot off a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi making the same demand.
Elections to the 81-member Jharkhand assembly are due later this year. The huge hoardings displayed at prominent locations in the city questioned: “When will we get Rs 1.36 lakh crore dues for the development of Jharkhand's displaced, Dalits, minorities, farmers, youth, tribals, poor, children and women?”
Soren, also the JMM executive president, has been demanding Rs 1.36 lakh crore dues from the Centre for a long time.
Earlier this month he had asserted that had his government got the coal royalty of Rs 1.36 lakh crore pending with the Centre, women of the state would have been given Rs 3 lakh.
Soren had earlier said in an X post: "The Centre should clear Jharkhand's dues to the tune of Rs 1.36 lakh crore. We can transfer Rs 3 lakh each to women here. We are Jharkhandis and we know how to take our rights."
Last month, Soren in a letter to Prime Minister Modi stated that coal companies did not clear the Rs 1.36 lakh crore dues despite the Supreme Court's order on mining dues, causing irreparable loss to the state and its people.
He had demanded a direct debit of the amount from Coal India's account to the state of Jharkhand from the reserves in the Reserve Bank of India as was done in case of Jharkhand State Electricity Board dues to the DVC.
"The State of Jharkhand is an under-developed state and there are lots of social economic development projects which are getting hampered due to non-payment of our justifiable demands," Soren had written to the PM.