DIGGING IN HIS HEELS

Amitabh Srivastava

A fter me, the deluge? No, with Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren, that could well be recast as ‘After me, me’. The way he has been steel-plating himself through pitched battle, a phase that was to have felled him has actually seen Soren rise in stature as a political artist. From just another innocuous non-BJP CM, crisis has revealed him to be a nimble-footed, pugnacious opponent willing to redraw the rules— even controversially. On September 14, Soren’s cabinet pushed the ceiling of reservations in government jobs up to 77 per cent and set 1932 as the cutoff year to determine domicile status. A day later, he tweeted a video of his supporters cheering, ‘Jharkhand ka mukhyamantri kaisa ho, Hemant Soren jaisa ho.’ That may have seemed a bit strange to some. After all, that slogan is usually reserved for CM-wannabes. But those in the party who claim to read the CM’s lips say it has future connotations.

In other words, Soren is anticipating a formal setback, and preparing for a stronger return. To begin with, he is battling multiple legal challenges, including the prospect of disqualification from the assembly. The BJP, Soren’s main opponent, had petitioned Governor Ramesh Bais against him, saying a mining lease he owned violated the Representation of the People Act, 1951. Bais forwarded it to the Election Commission (EC), which sent its recommendation last month to the governor. Though Bais is yet to reveal the precise contents of the EC’s direction, Soren is wid ely believed to be living on borrowed time.