Jharkhand under BJP's scanner

New Delhi: While Maharashtra's MVA government has collapsed, BJP strategists have apparently trained their guns at the JMM-Congress-RJD government of Jharkhand.

With eleven Chief Ministers and three spells of President's Rule since the state's formation in 2000, Jharkhand has had a pride of place amongst India's most politically unstable states. 

Since being elected to power in 2019, the Hemant Soren government has also been battling one crisis after another. Serious graft charges have been levelled against the chief minister and his family members. In view of a pending case seeking Soren's disqualification as a legislator in an "office for profit" case, hectic jockeying and lobbying has been happening within the JMM, as also amongst the coalition partners. 

In past months, it has not been all hunky-dory between the Congress and the JMM, particularly after Soren turned down the Congress request for allowing the party to contest the Rajya Sabha vacancy from the state. Instead, the JMM fielded its own candidate in Mahua Maji. The point is this: The circumstances are just right for the BJP strategists to move in. 

The BJP game plan

 

In the 81-member Jharkhand Assembly, the JMM has 30 MLAs against 17 of the Congress and one each of the RJD, NCP and the CPI(ML). 

The BJP has 26 MLAs and the total NDA strength is 30. The saffron party was virtually wiped out of the state's tribal belt - winning just two of the 28 seats in the region. 

Therefore, the saffron party has been attempting to politically claw back in a state that sends 14 members to the Lok Sabha - bigger numbers as compared to states like Haryana or Punjab. 

Until last year, BJP interlocutors had been in touch with 10 of the possible turncoats in the Congress legislator party; while the rebel camp requires a strength of 12 MLAs to override the provisions of the anti-defection law. 

A split in the JMM camp can also not be ruled out, given the simmering resentment against the chief minister and family members. 

The BJP, therefore, has two choices: Should it allow the Soren government to fall on the weight of its inner contradictions? Or, should the party step in with a Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh-Karnataka type of operation? 

The Presidential poll effect 

After state chief minister Hemant Soren's meeting with Home Minister Amit Shah this week, there have been high speculations that the JMM leader would extend support to the BJP's presidential nominee Draupadi Murmu - a former Jharkhand Governor. 

If Soren were to move in that direction, his position in the Opposition camp is likely to get tentative -a development that could possibly mark the beginning of the end of the Jharkhand government. 

If he does align with the BJP, Soren could possibly get a reprieve in terms of the pending cases against him, likely to be investigated by the central agencies including the Enforcement Directorate. But this situation would also raise possibilities of a realignment of political forces in the state. 

The JMM support for the BJP's presidential nominee would hold huge symbolic value for the saffron party's quest for acceptability among the tribal voters. 

Of the total of 47 reserved Lok Sabha seats for Scheduled Tribes, tribal seats to the Lok Sabha across the country, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh - with 5 and 6 reserved seats - account for the highest concentration of tribal seats. 

Charges against Soren 

Graft charges have come raining down on the Chief Minister. He has been accused of having had a 0.88-acre mining lease allotted in his name. The lease was hastily cancelled after BJP national president and former chief minister Raghbar Das sought Soren's disqualification in an "office for profit" case filed with the Election Commission. 

In January this year, the state BJP accused the chief minister of having granted permission to a company owned by his younger brother and Dumka MLA, Basant Soren, to export stone chips to Bangladesh -a causing a loss of Rs. 8 crores to the state exchequer. 

The BJP has also alleged and produced documents in support of charges that the Chief Minister's media adviser Abhishek Prasad had been granted a stone mining lease on an 11.7-acre plot in the Sahibganj district. 

In April this year, the BJP accused the Soren government in another case of corruption relating to the allotment of an 11-acre plot at an industrial cluster in the state capital to a private firm -Sohrai Live Private Limited - that belongs to the Chief Minister's wife Kalpana Soren. 

In short: Soren's bag of troubles is full and he has reasons enough to feel rattled. The BJP would probably not find it difficult to persuade him to support Murmu's candidature.