Game is up, Soren now has to wait for his Ides of March

The other major option had to be dumped after yesterday’s Goa experience. The Soren camp had planned to reduce the strength of the NDA to 40 by having the seniormost member of the House elected the pro-tem Speaker. In that case, the most likely candidate would have been Inder Singh Namdhari of the JD (U). The NDA total would have slipped to 40.

Then in the Goa style, Soren’s group had elaborately worked on a plan of having one of the five Independents disqualified. But Sonia Gandhi advised President’s Rule soon after the Congress tried out that experiment in the western state yesterday.

Earlier, Soren had also planned to have the nominated Anglo-Indian MLA play a role in the survival of the government. If this Anglo-Indian nominee could be empowered with voting rights before the confidence motion was tabled, Soren had the outside chance of making it. Then, it transpired, that like everywhere else in the country, the House has to meet to nominate the Anglo-Indian MLA. This option too was nipped in the bud. As a result, Soren is clutching on to that outside chance of Ekka.

Ekka has gone on record saying that the main battle he had fought in his constituency in Kolebira was against the Congress. So there was no question of his aligning with the UPA. But Soren decided to play the Christian card in a last-ditch attempt that if politics failed to entrap Ekka, religion might. But BJP leaders say this is a dangerous ploy. They are aware of the Christian hurt because of what they view as Ekka’s ‘‘betrayal.’’

But that distress would never have translated to political anger, unless fuelled by leaders like Shibu Soren. The BJP warned that this ‘‘was like playing with fire.’’ The tribal belt in Jharkhand has experienced peace for quite some time and even ripples of disturbances in neighbouring Orissa had never been felt here. Soren, of course, would hardly heed such political advice. Obviously, with his patronage, a new ‘‘Enos Ko Wapas Bulao’’ agitation has been launched just outside Ranchi’s Raj Bhavan where speaker after speaker is pleading with Ekka not to ‘‘compromise his Adivasi pride’’.