Hemant Soren, the Jharkhand Chief Minister and head of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), resigned on Wednesday night before his arrest after more than six hours of questioning by the Enforcement Directorate over ownership of a piece of land. His loyalist and state Transport Minister Champai Soren will step into his role as CM.
Hemant Soren met the Governor while in ED custody and submitted his resignation. The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha-led ruling coalition has proposed the name of Champai Soren, a close aide of Hemant Soren, as the next chief minister. The ED officials questioned Hemant Soren for more than six hours, after which he went to Raj Bhawan and submitted his resignation.
“The CM is in ED custody. The CM has gone to the Governor with the ED team to submit his resignation… Champai Soren will be the new chief minister… We have enough numbers…,” JMM MP Mahua Maji said.
The Congress and the RJD are the other two parties of the ruling coalition. Earlier, the JMM MLAs gathered at the CM residence in the evening and elected Champai Soren as the leader of the JMM legislative party.
Jharkhand Congress president Rajesh Thakur said, “CM Hemant Soren has decided to resign. Champai Soren has been chosen as the new leader of the Legislative party… All the MLAs are with us…” The JMM and Congress are allies in the state.
The ED has been sending summons to Soren in connection with an alleged money laundering case, and he has repeatedly refused to appear before the agency. He has been questioned thrice so far: The first was in November 2021 in ED’s illegal mining case.
The second and the third summons – on January 20 and 31 respectively – pertain to the alleged proceeds of crime emanating from the illegal sale and purchase of land in Ranchi in which IAS officer Chhavi Ranjan is also an accused.
In his police complaint, Soren had alleged that the ED conducted the search operation at his Delhi residence to “harass and malign him and his entire community”. Soren wrote in his complaint that the ED officials had informed the media of the purported search to create a spectacle and cause disrepute to him in the eyes of the general public.
He also addressed ED’s claims of a BMW car and cash being seized from the Delhi residence. “I am not the owner of the BMW car… I do not own any illicit cash,” he said, adding that the “aforesaid acts” were done to “intentionally humiliate me in public”.
There were speculations that Hemant Soren’s wife Kalpana’s name could be proposed as the new CM. According to ED officials, the agency is questioning Hemant Soren as part of its investigation into an alleged racket of illegal change of land ownership by the mafia. The 48-year-old leader was previously questioned on January 20 in connection with the case.
