State witnessed high political drama on Friday as the Champai Soren government on Friday carried out its first cabinet expansion with induction of eight ministers, amidst last minute dropping of the name of Latehar MLA Baidyanath Ram—the ninth probable ministerial candidate.
Earlier, hours before cabinet expansion 12 MLAs from Congress locked themselves in a room at circuit house as they were upset with retention of three Congress ministers who were in the Hemant Soren cabinet.
Among the eight ministers who took oath six were part of Hemant Soren cabinet, while Basant Soren, younger son of JMM patriarch Shibu Soren and JMM Chaibasa MLA Deepak Birua are new.
Jharkhand Governor C.P. Radhakrishnan administered the oath to the new ministers at Raj Bhavan. Of the eight MLAs sworn in as Cabinet Ministers, five are from the JMM and three from Congress. Mithilesh Thakur, Deepak Barua, Basant Soren, Hafizul Hasan and Bebi Devi of JMM took the oath.
No changes were made by the Congress with Rameshwar Oroan, Banna Gupta, and Badal retaining their Ministerial berths, while JMM made two changes. In the place of Hemant Soren, who is in jail in connection with money laundering case, his younger brother and MLA from Dumka Assembly seat Basant Soren was given the Ministerial post, whereas in place of Joba Manjhi, who represents Manoharpur Assembly constituency, Deepak Barua was given the chance to become the Minister.
Basant is the sixth member of the Soren family to enter politics. He had contested the Rajya Sabha elections in 2016, but had to face defeat. Following this, he continued working at the party’s organizational level.
Basant became a member of Jharkhand Assembly after winning the Dumka bye-election held in 2020. He had defeated BJP candidate and former Minister Lewis Marandi. The seat had become vacant due to the resignation of Hemant Soren. In the 2019 Assembly elections, Hemant Soren had contested and won both the Dumka and Barhet Assembly seats. Later he vacated the Dumka seat which necessitated the bye-election.
Before the cabinet expansion there was some reported discontentment among the Congress MLAs on the issue of the same leaders retaining their posts as Ministers. 12 MLAs from Congress camp which included Irfan Ansari, Jaimangal Singh alias Anoop Singh, Deepika Pandey Singh, Bhushan Bara locked themselves in a room at Circuit House. However, Jharkhand Congress Chief Rajesh Thakur and Jharkhand Congress in-charge Ghulam Ahmad Mir settled the issue pacifying the upset legislators. The upset MLAs told media persons that they will inform the central high command with their grievances.
Earlier this month on February 2, Alamgir Alam of Congress and Satyanand Bhokta of RJD had taken oath, along with Chief Minister Champai Soren.
Dropped at last minutes
The biggest drama at today's cabinet expansion was JMM MLA Baidyanath Ram name being dropped from the list of ministers at the last minute.
The Raj Bhawan released the list on Friday based on recommendations from Chief Minister Champai Soren for his cabinet expansion. In the list released by Raj Bhawan secretariat, Ram MLA from Latehar was in the list of nine MLAs who were to take oath. Ram's name was at number two second to Congress senior leader and former finance minister Rameshwar Oraon, but at the last minute he was dropped from the list.
Ram was way to the Raj Bhawan after receiving an invitation/warrant from the Governor to take oath as minister. However, on the way he received a call from Supriyo Bhattacharya to come to the CMO. Supriyo told him that his nomination to the Cabinet had been put on hold following unexpected pressure from Congress. Ram said the JMM decision had not sent a good message, particularly to the Scheduled Caste community, by not allowing me to take the oath.