Tirkey admits failure to contain Cong in-fighting
RANCHI: Congress executive president Bandhu Tirkey admitted the failure of the party leadership in Jharkhand to contain the controversy over the re-appointment of four Congress legislators as ministers in Champai Soren’s Cabinet.
“It is a failure of state Congress leadership, including me, that we could not sort out the issue of ministerial berths. The high command should listen to legislators who went to meet them,” Tirkey said while responding to a query from reporters during a press conference at his official residence in Morabadi on Sunday.
Probed further in this regard, Tirkey said, “Let the central leadership sort out the issue, and our party state president Rajesh Thakur is looking after the matter.”
Earlier, during the press conference, Tirkey accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders of being involved in the tribal land scam and said it was wrong to allege former chief minister Hemant Soren for such a scam.
“Names of BJP leaders have surfaced in many scams involving tribal land in Purani Ranchi, Sutiambegarh, and other places, but BJP state president Babulal Marandi, instead of raising the issue, is raising his voice only against Soren, though there is no documentary evidence against Soren so far,” Tirkey said, sharing a list of tribal plots allegedly being grabbed with the connivance of BJP leaders.
While BJP spokesperson Pratul Naht Shahdeo did not comment on Congress in-fighting, he said it was not fair on the part of a “convicted leader like Bandhu Tirkey to teach a lesson of morality to the BJP in the matter involving tribal land.”
Shahdeo dared Tirkey to “raise the tribal land-related matter in the legal forum.”
He questioned the role of Tirkey in the matter, asking, “If there is real involvement of BJP leaders in tribal land scam, why he was not asking his government to take action during the last four years.”
Amid controversy over ministerial berths, chief minister Champai Soren clarified that there is no threat to his government. Soren, who is in the national capital, made the remarks before meeting Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge.
Soren said, “There’s no issue, our alliance is strong.” On being asked about disgruntled Congress MLAs reaching Delhi, he had told reporters, “This is an internal matter of the Congress, they will resolve it. I have nothing to say about that. There is no conflict between the JMM and Congress, and everything is absolutely fine.”