Behind the scenes – How Jharkhand Congress legislators were caught with cash in West Bengal?

New Delhi: After winning the by-elections from Kolebira assembly constituency in Jharkhand in 2018, Naman Bixal Kongari of the Congress told the then party chief Rahul Gandhi that the Ranchi-Delhi flight he had taken to meet him was the first air travel of his life.

Coming from a poor tribal family of Simdega district in Jharkhand, Kongari had to go for crowdfunding to fight the by-elections.

Four years later, Kongari was among the three Congress legislators from Jharkhand caught carrying a huge amount of cash in West Bengal.

In July 2021, Kongari had claimed that he was offered Rs one crore in cash and a ministerial berth for toppling the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM)-Congress coalition government in the state.

A few days earlier, the Jharkhand police had arrested three people - Abhishek Dubey, Amit Singh and Niwaran Prasad Mahato -- on a complaint filed by Congress legislator Kumar Jaimangal for allegedly planning to overthrow the coalition government.

Kongari alleged that the three had approached him a dozen times with offers of Rs one crore in cash and a ministerial berth. He also stated that the three had claimed to be doing this for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

According to Kongari, he had informed chief minister Hemant Soren, the then Congress in-charge of Jharkhand RPN Singh (who is now in the BJP), and Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Alamgir Alam about the development.

Almost a year later on July 30 night, Kongari along with two other Congress legislators Irfan Ansari (Jamtara) and Rajesh Kachhap (Khijri) were detained by the West Bengal police after a huge amount of cash was seized from their vehicle in Ranihati area of Howrah district.

Apparently, the chief minister was alerted by the state police and intelligence officials about the movement of the three Congress legislators from Jharkhand to West Bengal on the way to Assam. He in turn alerted his West Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee after which the police swung into action to intercept their car and caught them with cash.

NewsDrum had reported on July 7 that the rebellion in the Shiv Sena that led to the fall of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in Maharashtra had alarmed Soren who had started taking precautionary measures, including keeping a watch on the movement of some Congress legislators.

A few days ago, Banerjee claimed that the BJP is now trying to topple the elected government in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh after successfully doing so in Maharashtra.

In April this year, Ansari, Kongari, Kachhap and another legislator Uma Shankar Yadav Akela (Barhi) held a closed-door meeting in which they expressed dissatisfaction over the functioning of Congress ministers and decided to meet the party high command on the issue. The four also demanded rotation of ministerial positions among the Congress legislators to ensure equal opportunity for all.

Even then, the talk of these four Congress legislators switching sides had surfaced and there were reports that they were in touch with the BJP leadership. It is said that they failed to bring more Congress legislators to their fold as a result of which they had to abandon their plan.

Ansari, son of veteran Congress leader Furqan Ansari and a two-term legislator from Jamtara, has been nursing a grudge with the party leadership over the denial of a ministerial berth to him from the Muslim quota. The Congress leadership had preferred Alam to Ansari in recommending the names for induction in the JMM-led coalition government after winning the 2019 state elections.

However, he was later appointed chairman of the Jharkhand Haj Committee.  

Akela, a former BJP legislator, had joined the Congress ahead of the 2019 assembly elections.

The ruling alliance has 47 legislators in the 81-member assembly. While the JMM has 30 legislators, the Congress has 16 and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) one. On the other hand, the BJP has 25 legislators while the Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (CPI(ML) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have one each.

The development has brought some relief to Soren who is already facing the heat over the office-of-profit case being heard by the Election Commission of India (ECI).

Jharkhand governor Ramesh Bais had referred a representation he had received in February this year by the BJP to the ECI after which the poll body issued a notice to Soren in May o explain his position.

The BJP and former Jharkhand chief minister Raghubar Das had alleged that Soren misused his office by allocating a stone quarrying lease on government land in Ranchi to himself while he was the minister in charge of mines in 2021, which "prima facie violates" certain provisions of the Representation of People's Act.

Soren had recently extended an olive branch to the BJP by offering his support to National Democratic Alliance (NDA) presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu despite her challenger Yashwant Sinha hailing from his state.

Update: The Congress on Sunday suspended three Jharkhand MLAs, who were caught allegedly with a huge amount of cash in West Bengal's Howrah.