As a damage control exercise in Jharkhand, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wooed two women leaders from the rival camp within weeks of the arrest of the outgoing chief minister Hemant Soren on January 31.
The leaders are Gita Koda, a lone Congress MP from the state, who joined the saffron party on February 26, and Sita Soren, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha MLA, who joined on March 19.
Gita Koda is the wife of former chief minister Madhu Koda. Sita Soren is the widow of Durga Soren, Hemant’s elder brother.
Therefore, it’s a pertinent question to ask whether the BJP has a contingency plan to deal with the situation arising out of the arrest of the Delhi chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, who appears to be a hard nut to crack and has decided to work from jail. Besides, he is getting much more media coverage because Delhi is the national capital.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convener has mastered the art of cultivating a good relationship with the Fourth Estate.
Though developments in Jharkhand got relatively little attention, yet the BJP could not ignore it. Therefore, it decided to take into its fold Gita, whose husband has been in the news for various corruption charges. Sita, too, was facing the heat following the March 4 Supreme Court ruling. She was charged with voting for an Independent Rajya Sabha candidate in 2012 after accepting a bribe.
Not only that, by winning over the latter, the BJP exploited the fault line within the Soren family, especially after the emergence of Kalpana Soren, Hemant’s wife.
When Kalpana burst into tears while speaking on the occasion of the 51st foundation day of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha in Giridih on March 4, many in the crowd, especially Adivasis, were moved.
This event was termed as her foray into politics.
The BJP was alarmed over JMM’s move. Actually, this anniversary is observed on February 2, but this time it was held more than a month later
because of the Enforcement Directorate’s action against the chief minister on January 31.
Though her role in JMM is yet not clearly defined, the fact remains that she would actively campaign against the BJP in the Lok Sabha and assembly elections due later this year.
Some parallels can be drawn between Hemant’s arrest and the surrender of his former Bihar counterpart, Lalu Prasad Yadav, before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on July 30, 1997, just five days after he stepped down from his post to hand over the state’s baton to his wife, Rabri Devi.
Political observers are debating whether Soren would earn sympathy votes and whether the BJP would have to pay dearly in the upcoming Lok Sabha and subsequent assembly elections. Though it would be premature to make any predictions, the fact remains that the arrest of Lalu Prasad and his conviction in the fodder scam case has not finished him off.
The BJP and Janata Dal (United) alone could not defeat him in any election more than a quarter-century later. It was only when both parties came together that they were able to defeat him in the 2005, 2010, and 2020 Assembly elections, and in the 1999, 2009, and 2019 parliamentary polls.
This is in contrast to neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, where the saffron party alone had come to power several times by defeating the Samajwadi Party since 1991, even at the height of post-Mandal polarisation.
Caste dynamics
The Muslim-Yadav combined strength of 32% – besides some Dalit and backward castes votes – kept Lalu politically alive.
In Jharkhand, 26.3% Scheduled Tribes and 14.53% Muslim votes – besides the support of some Yadavs, other backward castes and Dalits – place Soren in a more comfortable position than the Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo.
There are several different Adivasi groups as well. However, it’s important to note that Santhals, the tribal community to which Soren belongs, is numerically the biggest among them and comprise about one-third of the ST population of Jharkhand.
Apart from that, there is a possibility of the Adivasi communities uniting after the recent developments. The ruling JMM, their most influential outfit, is quick to remind its support base that the dikkus (outsiders), in collusion with corporate interests, are trying to dominate and oppress the aboriginal people of the state, which was carved out from Bihar on November 15, 2000.
Needless to say, Jharkhand is one of India’s richest states in terms of minerals.
The tribals, not only in Jharkhand but also elsewhere, fear that multinational corporations, backed by the Modi government, are attempting to seize their land.
This fear has historically driven many tribals towards Maoism in the Chotanagpur Plateau, the heartland of India. There has been a demand for the creation of Greater Jharkhand, comprising Adivasi-dominated districts from undivided Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and West Bengal. However, they had to be content just with the Bihar part of the entire region.
The sense of alienation somewhat increased among the tribals of Jharkhand after Narendra Modi came to power in May 2014. This was largely because after the assembly elections held seven months later in December, the BJP made Raghubar Das, a non-tribal having ancestral origin in Chhattisgarh, as the chief minister of the state created in the name of Adivasis. He served for one full term till the saffron party was voted out of power in December 2019.
Incidentally, Das himself lost from his own constituency, East Singhbhum. This had happened when the BJP had won 12 out of 14 seats in Lok Sabha elections held just seven months earlier.
It is learnt that the BJP’s consequent response to the Pulwama terror attack of February 14, 2019 was largely attributed to its good performance in the parliamentary polls.
Otherwise, the saffron party was not in a comfortable position as the tribals, in general, blamed it for the rise of corporate culture in the state.
Das, the first non-Adivasi chief minister, was accused of enacting land acquisition laws suited for industrialists and mining firms. More than 10,000 Adivasis were charged with sedition when they launched the Pathalgadi movement in protest against the Das government’s land acquisition policy.
ED harassment
Now, the JMM and its allies, Congress and RJD, allege that Soren is being targeted by the ED because he resisted corporate intrusion into the state. They claim that it was Modi who promoted Das (now the governor of Odisha).
According to them, the prime minister is directly accountable for the harassment of Shibu Soren’s son, a tribal leader and advocate for the Jharkhand movement.
Meanwhile, Adivasis are apprehensive of the repeated demand raised by the BJP of implementing the Uniform Civil Code. Given this context, there is likelihood of the JMM further consolidating its position after Soren’s arrest.
Among other factors, Lalu’s survival can also be attributed to the sympathy factor.
The entry of Kalpana into politics has added an emotional twist to the situation. She was in Giridih just a day after her 48th birthday on March 3, the same day she visited her husband in jail and sought blessings from her father-in-law Shibu Soren and his wife, Rupi.
In Delhi, too, the arrest of Kejriwal may backfire on the BJP. His emotional appeal, read by his wife Sunita to the people, may have its impact.
