Soren pleads, Laloo refuses to back off

While working on Laloo, Soren was cool on another front. He avoided a meeting with Congress President Sonia Gandhi by deferring his departure from Ranchi today. The meeting had been on the cards following his discussion with her political secretary Ahmed Patel on the telephone yesterday.

Though the Congress has not taken a public stand in favour of either party, the trend in UPA is building up in favour of RJD candidate Muktinath Upadhyay for a variety of reasons. Three independent legislators —— Stephen Marandi, Bandu Tirkey and Job Manjhi —— have already joined hands with the RJD. Along with seven RJD members, they are the proposers for Upadhyay.

They have publicly declared their firm opposition to Durga’s candidature. Marandi’s case is that he has in fact won his assembly seat due to a mass vote against Soren’s nepotism.

State Congress president Sushila Kerketa and other party leaders are also unhappy with Soren for his unilateral declaration of Durga’s candidature without consulting any UPA partner.

Soren’s contention, on the other hand, is that with the seat having been vacated by a JMM member, the party has a natural claim over it. More so, when JMM has the single largest chunk of 17 in the UPA flock of 39 MLAs.

The NDA strength is 41.

The RJD case is that it has backed JMM in the last four Rajya Sabha polls, apart from offering unconditional support to Soren for forming a government. It is, therefore, the JMM’s turn to return this favour. It cites the decision of the 30-member BJP to offer the seat to the six-member JD(U) group as a to demand the seat.

Laloo has acted smart by picking up Upadhyay. Being a former general secretary of JMM and a one-time close confidante of Soren, Upadhyay is the right choice to sabotage any gameplan of the JMM chief. Together, both Laloo and Upadhyay seem to be succeeding in playing the son-card against Soren.

But, Soren is driving a hard bargain too, knowing that Sonia has to save UPA in Jharkhand, if not for anything else, at least for the sake of her prestige in New Delhi, where BJP would miss no time for taunting her for failing to keep the alliance intact. Therefore, he would demand a clear assurance for the restoration of his Cabinet berth as the price for letting UPA stay intact in Jharkhand. It would be for Sonia to take the final call.