Marandi protege to Jharkhand BJP’s new LoP face after four years: Who is Amar Bauri?

As soon as he was named as the BJP Legislature Party leader,

Bauri took to X to thank Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other top BJP leaders at the central and state levels, including Babulal Marandi, for posing “faith in a chota karyakarta (small worker) like him”.

“But the message was clear that it was Babulal Marandi who brought him to this post,” said a BJP source.

State BJP president Marandi was on February 24, 2020 elected as the BJP Legislative Party leader but had not been accorded the LoP status so far by Speaker Rabindranath Mahto due to an anti-defection petition against the ex-chief minister pending before him.

Marandi has been Bauri’s mentor, although they fell out for some years after the 2014 state Assembly elections. Bauri was then elected as an MLA from Chandanyari on the ticket of Marandi’s Jharkhand Vikas Morcha-Prajatantrik (JVM-P) ticket, but soon he, along with five other party MLAs, joined the BJP-led coalition government, merging their breakaway JVM (P) Legislature Party with the BJP.

After remaining at loggerheads for a period, Marandi and Bauri sank their differences as the former merged his JVM (P) with the BJP in February 2020.

Cut to July 2023, when the BJP leadership appointed Marandi as the state unit chief and within months Bauri was picked to succeed him as its Legislature Party leader.

“It was Marandi who suggested Bauri’s name. Dalits are around 12-15% of Jharkhand’s population, roughly 50 lakh in numbers, and Bauri would help us reach most of these voters. The initial disagreement did not matter as in 2014 Bauri had informed Marandi about his decision, reasoning that his politics would get a boost. But be that as it may, Marandi himself merged his party with the BJP. Matbhed tha, lekin manbhed nahi tha (There was difference of opinion, but there was no hatred),” a party source said.

The son of a police constable, Bauri was the first person in his family to have passed class 10 who continued his study in Jamshedpur and went on to complete his post-graduation in history. BJP stalwart Atal Behari Vajpayee’s speeches and policies left a mark on him early in his career.

Bauri made his electoral debut in 2004 as an Independent candidate unsuccessfully. In the 2009 election, he contested on the JVM(P)’s ticket, but lost by a slim margin.

In the previous Raghubar Das Cabinet, Bauri was inducted as revenue and tourism minister. An officer says that as a minister he took some significant decisions such as building the Patratu Valley road and launching several religious tourism festivals.

Sources said he digitised a part of the land records and also started the popular Re 1 charge on properties registered in the name of women members in 2017 in a bid to empower them within their households – a scheme which was scrapped by the current JMM-led government headed by CM Hemant Soren in 2020.

“Bauri was seen as a meticulous person during his ministerial tenure,” said an official.

The Soren Cabinet also gave its approval to the Vigilance Bureau to initiate a preliminary inquiry against Bauri and four other former ministers on charges of disproportionate assets.

“Bauri takes all this in his stride. After he became MLA he brought road to his area, and has been heavily influenced by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, as it was during his time that Sarva Sikha Abhiyan for ensuring universal access to education was implemented, giving a boost to the enrolment of Dalit students in primary schools. Access to education is one of the major challenges for SC communities in Jharkhand, and he wishes to tackle it aggressively in the state,” a BJP source said.

A year after the BJP lost power in Jharkhand, the party in 2020 appointed Bauri as its SC wing head. Party sources say he revamped the wing with several Dalit outreach programmes.