Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) executive president Hemant Soren was sworn in as Jharkhand new Chief Minister for the third term today at Raj Bhawan. Governor C.P. Radhakrishnan administered the oath of office and secrecy to the new Chief Minister. Hemant will be 13th Chief Minister of State. Prior to today's oath, Hemant had assumed the office of Chief Minister for the first time for 14 months and second time for four years.
Earlier, Governor CP Radhakrishnan invited Hemant to take oath after a delegation of INDIA bloc leaders on Wednesday met Governor staked claim for government formation following the resignation of Champai Soren who held the office of CM for five months.
Champai met the Governor on Wednesday to submit his resignation after the ruling coalition’s 45 MLAs elected Hemant Soren as their leader. Hemant was released from jail after the Jharkhand High Court granted him bail on June 28, five months after he was arrested. The court had noted that there exist “reasons to believe that he was not guilty of the offence” of money laundering brought against him over a plot of land in Ranchi.
A JMM-led alliance delegation met Governor Radhakrishnan at Raj Bhavan on Wednesday. The delegation headed by Hemant Soren comprised Congress state unit president Rajesh Thakur, RJD minister Satyanand Bhokta and CPI(ML)-L MLA Vinod Singh. Kalpana Soren, the Gandey MLA and wife of Hemant Soren, was also part of the delegation.
Last week, former Jharkhand chief minister and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader Hemant Soren was released from jail after the Jharkhand High Court granted bail to him in a money laundering case linked to a land scam. The verdict follows the court's decision to reserve the order on June 13 regarding Soren's bail application.
The ruling was made by a single bench led by Justice Rongon Mukhopadhyay. The Bench held: The overall conspectus of the case based on broad probabilities does not specifically or indirectly assign the petitioner to be involved in the acquisition and possession as well as concealment of 8.86 acres of land at Shanti Nagar, Baragain, Ranchi connected to the “proceeds of crime”. None of the registers/revenue records bare imprint of the direct involvement of the petitioner in the acquisition and possession of the said land.
Meanwhile, before he took oath today he posted a video message on X, in which he slammed "arrogant people intoxicated with power (a reference to the BJP) who tried to silence me", and said, "Today, the public opinion of the people of Jharkhand will rise again. Jai Jharkhand, Jai Hind.
Moreover, after taking oath Soren said, "From 2019 the present 'mahagathbandan' government has done all the work as per interests of people here. During political ups and downs, Champai Soren took forward those initiatives... because I was in jail. (Now)... because of the court's order, I could come out..."
Hemant Soren’s wife Kalpana Murmu Soren has shared a photo of the appointment letter on the X handle. Along with the photo, Kalpana wrote that democracy finally won. The injustice that started on January 31, 2024 has now started getting justice in the true sense. Jai Jharkhand.
Sources said that the JMM/Congress leadership decided to repose faith in Hemant once again keeping an eye on year end Assembly elections. The INDIA bloc doesn’t want to give any chance to BJP and with sentiments high among tribal particularly after Hemant’s arrest. The bail of Hemant had come as a shot in arm for Soren’s party, and the INDIA bloc of opposition parties. Soren was the second chief minister -- Arvind Kejriwal is the other -- from the front who was arrested by the federal agency barely months before the Lok Sabha elections.
While Kejriwal is still in jail, Soren walking out of jail on Friday is seen as a boost for the ruling JMM-Congress-RJD alliance in Jharkhand, which is headed for assembly elections later this year along with Maharashtra, Haryana and Jammu & Kashmir.
Soren resigned as chief minister on January 31, minutes before he was arrested by the federal agency , and passed on the baton to Champai Soren. As he languished in jail, his party won three Lok Sabha seats this year, two more than its tally in 2019; its partner, the Congress, won two. The BJP-led NDA won nine of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in the state, three less than 2019. All the five seats won by the JMM-Congress combine in the state this time are reserved for scheduled tribes.
