JHARKHAND: BID TO TOPPLE SOREN
On July 24, the Ranchi police arrested three men— Abhishek Dubey, Amit Singh and Nivaran Prasad Mahto—from the city, unravelling an alleged plot to topple the Jharkhand government led by Hemant Soren. The accused, police say, had accompanied three MLAs, including two allegedly from the Congress, to New Delhi on July 15 as part of the conspiracy.
Police say they found Rs 2 lakh in cash on the three accused, apart from documents pertaining to the MLAs’ visit to the national capital. Dubey, Singh and Mahto were booked under sections of the Indian Penal Code, the Representation of the People Act and the Prevention of Corruption Act. They were produced before a local court and sent to judicial custody.
Dubey, Singh and Mahto, according to the police, have revealed that some Maharashtra politicians, allegedly from the BJP, had met the three Jharkhand legislators in Delhi and arranged their meeting with senior party leaders. Dubey has also claimed the MLAs were offered Rs 1 crore each as advance for toppling the coalition government of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), Congress and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). But the MLAs, he said, returned to Ranchi on July 16 without having received the promised advance.
Police say they have gathered from the arrested trio that five persons from Maharashtra reached Ranchi on July 21 and checked into four rooms at the Le Lac hotel. They were joined by one of the MLAs who visited Delhi. Dubey, too, was summoned to the hotel. The same day, an MLA from Hazaribag reportedly informed Singh that eight legislators were in on the plan to topple the government. The conspiracy apparently involved wooing four more MLAs.
The ruling alliance has the support of 49 legislators in the 82-member (including a nominated member) Jharkhand assembly. Thirty of them belong to the JMM. The Congress has an effective strength of 18 MLAs after two Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (JVM) legislators, Bandhu Tirkey and Pradeep Yadav, defected to the party in February 2020. The defections are yet to be approved by the assembly speaker. The RJD has one MLA.
The BJP, which lost power in the December 2019 state election, has an effective strength of 26 (JVM founder Babulal Marandi rejoined the party in February last year). The BJP’s erstwhile partner, AJSU (All Jharkhand Students Union) Party, has two members.
Soren, who is also the JMM executive president, is a vocal critic of the BJP-led central government. He has repeatedly questioned the Centre’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, besides taking on the government on various issues, such as the contentious farm laws and, most recently, the Pegasus snooping controversy.
Jharkhand, which was formed in November 2000, has had a history of political defections and frequent change of governments. Till 2014, the state had witnessed nine governments and three rounds of president’s rule. Raghubar Das of the BJP, who assumed office in December 2014, became the first Jharkhand chief minister to complete a full term. But even his tenure saw the defection of six JVM legislators to the BJP (in February 2015). While Hemant Soren, who wrested power from the BJP, does have a clear majority in the assembly as of now, even a handful of defections can threaten his alliance government.
Police sources say the lid was blown off the conspiracy after the Congress’s
Bermo MLA Anup Singh, alias Jaimangal Singh, lodged a police complaint on July 22 about political influencers and financers camping in Ranchi with the intention of destabilising the Soren government. Money was allegedly being routed through hawala transactions, he said in the complaint.
The police lodged an FIR and Dubey was picked up in a raid at the Le Lac hotel. A police statement said a few other suspects staying in the hotel had fled minutes before the raid. The police have seized their luggage and also have photocopies of their identity papers submitted while checking in to the hotel. Mahto and Singh were arrested from other locations in Ranchi.
Police say Dubey is a resident of Ranchi and runs a small shop. Singh, who is from Bokaro, is a contractual worker with Bharat Coking Coal Ltd. Mahto has a business in fruits. He unsuccessfully contested the 2019 assembly poll on a Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) ticket from Bokaro.
The JMM and the Congress have accused the BJP of trying to pull down their government. JMM principal general secretary Supriyo Bhattacharya said the events in Jharkhand mirrored the BJP’s manoeuvres to seize power in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
A day after the arrests, the Congress’s Kolebira MLA, Naman Bixal Kongari, claimed he was repeatedly approached by three people and offered over Rs 1 crore to help overturn the government. Kongari said he had shared all details with Soren and Congress legislature party leader Alamgir Alam.
A combative state BJP has shot back at the ruling alliance, with Marandi accusing Soren of getting the three men arrested on false charges; he has also demanded a probe by a special investigation team headed by a sitting high court judge.
The Association for Democratic Reforms, a group advocating electoral reforms, says in a report published in March 2021 that of the 405 defecting MLAs between 2016 and 2020, 182 (almost 45 per cent) had joined the BJP, followed by the Congress (38). The report noted that governments in Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Goa, Arunachal Pradesh and Karnataka fell during this period due to defections.
Even as the ruling and opposition camps in Jharkhand trade charges, the police have issued a statement claiming that Dubey, Singh and Mahto have admitted to contacting politicians and offering them money to bring down the government. The police are scrutinising ‘evidence’ seized during the raids to back up their case. If there was indeed a conspiracy, the Soren government has survived by a whisker. While this has prompted the ruling coalition partners to re-engage with their MLAs, the controversy is likely to keep the political pot boiling in the state for some time.