Opinion Musical chairs

Soren’s latest act of perfidy is the betrayal of his ally,the BJP,by voting against the party’s cut motion in Parliament last month. His son,Hemant,pleads old age and confusion as excuses for his father’s “voting error”,but the BJP suspects that the aging chameleon was exploring fresh options. Soren hoped that the Congress would reward him by appointing him a Union minister since he fears his days as CM are numbered. The chief minister has yet to find a safe assembly seat to contest before the deadline of June 30. None of his JMM MLAs,including his son and daughter-in-law,seems ready to oblige Soren by resigning from his/ her seat so that he could stand.

Soren first came to national attention in 1993,when he,along with three other JMM MPs,voted in Parliament to save the minority government of then-Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. It turned out that the JMM MPs were paid handsomely for their votes. Soren got caught since,unlike more seasoned and savvy politicians,he naively deposited the entire amount in his Parliament Street bank account. As coal minister in the first UPA government,Soren’s antecedents often embarrassed the Manmohan Singh government. He had to quit his post after a non-bailable warrant was issued against him for his alleged role in the Chirudih massacre in which 10 people were killed decades earlier. Another legal entanglement was conviction by a lower court for the murder of his personal secretary.

The BJP,which often criticised the Congress for sponsoring Soren despite his chequered history,suddenly changed tack and backed him as CM after the Jharkhand assembly elections in December 2009. It was one of the first political decisions of the BJP’s new president,Nitin Gadkari,who had proudly proclaimed that he wanted his party to return to value-based politics. The BJP seemed desperate to regain power in the state,even though Soren’s government is a far cry from its professed ideological beliefs. The BJP now has only itself to blame for the mess it has landed in. The party realises that Soren is not a long-term bet. Hemant has tried to woo back the BJP by dangling the carrot that the JMM would eventually support a BJP chief minister. But,with a badly splintered JMM,with several party MLAs nursing chief ministerial ambitions of their own,Soren’s son is in no position to deliver on his promise.

The Congress,for a change,has displayed political maturity and circumspection by refusing to bite the bait thrown by Soren. Wiser after its disastrous experience with Koda,the Congress insists that it will have no truck with Soren,and stick with Babulal Marandi,the widely respected tribal leader,who was its alliance partner in the last election. (The installation of Koda as CM in September 2006 in fact made explicit the habitual political promiscuity in the state: once a BJP MLA and a minister in the Marandi and Munda governments,he subsequently entered the assembly as an independent,and later helped dislodge the NDA government,to form a government headed by an independent with support from,amongst others,the Congress.)

While Soren for years was associated with the Congress,Marandi was once totally identified with the BJP. In his youth Marandi was groomed by the RSS and he played a pivotal role in building the party organisation in the state. He was Jharkhand’s first chief minister. But halfway through his term,the BJP ditched its own man and propped up Marandi’s junior minister,Arjun Munda,as CM. The ostensible reason for the sudden change of guard was the compulsions of politics,as several of Marandi’s ministers had revolted against him. The smooth talking Munda,who had once been with the JMM,had gained the confidence of a section of the Sangh and party central leadership.

The BJP has not been able to live down its betrayal of Marandi. Its poor performance in the assembly polls,despite the advantage of anti-incumbency and despite winning more than half the Lok Sabha seats in the state in the 2009 general elections,reflects its falling popularity. On the other hand,Marandi’s JVM party,which contested only 18 seats,returned 11 MLAs to the new assembly,a better strike rate than any other party in Jharkhand. The BJP seems to have backed the wrong horse. And a section of the party leadership is against throwing a lifeline to the Sorens yet again.

coomi.kapoor@expressindia.com