Champai’s rebellion not the only challenge for JMM in poll-bound Jharkhand

On July 3, a senior minister in the Jharkhand government had cautioned the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) executive president Hemant Soren against easing out Champai Soren from the chief minister’s post. The minister feared that any such move would needlessly test Champai’s loyalty, despite him having proved to be a valuable “proxy” for Hemant when the latter was in jail, and could push him towards rebellion at a time when Jharkhand was hurtling towards Assembly polls.

Less than two hours later, Champai was forced to submit his resignation as CM and pave the way for Hemant’s return to the post he had vacated on January 31, shortly before being arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in an alleged money-laundering case linked with a dubious land deal.

Tiger of Kolhan

That Champai felt humiliated by his unceremonious ouster was widely known within the JMM-Congress ruling coalition — he had, sources say, made no secret of it at a meeting of JMM MLAs convened to elect Hemant as the party leader. Yet, for that moment, the veteran Seraikella MLA had kept his peace; perhaps hoping that Hemant would compensate him with some lofty political assurance. That assurance never came.

Now, with less than three months left before Jharkhand goes to polls, Champai, hailed among his supporters as the “Tiger of Kolhan”, has triggered fears of an impending rampage within his party and the wider INDIA coalition in Jharkhand.

On Sunday (August 18), the former Jharkhand CM arrived in Delhi, after a fleeting visit to Kolkata (where he is learnt to have had a meeting with the BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari, though Champai has denied such claims) amid spiralling speculations of his imminent defection to the BJP. A JMM leader close to Champai told The Federal that feelers for joining the BJP have also been sent to Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma, the saffron party’s in-charge for Jharkhand polls, while Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has “also been in regular touch”.

Champai’s tweet

In an anguished post on X, Champai narrated the events preceding and following his removal as CM; making no secret of his sense of hurt and dropping a scarcely veiled hint that his long association with the JMM may be approaching its end.

“For the first time in my spotless political journey of the last four decades, I was broken from within ... When the party’s central executive meeting has not been held for years, and one-sided orders are passed, then whom should I go to and tell my problems? I am counted among the senior members in this party, the rest are juniors, and the supremo (Shibu Soren) who is senior to me is no longer active in politics due to ill-health, then what option did I have? If he had been active, perhaps the situation would have been different,” Champai, once a close confidante of Shibu Soren, wrote on X.

Making it known that he viewed the manner of his removal as the CM as a “blow to my self-respect”, Champai wrote further that he now had three options ahead of him; “to retire from politics, to form my own separate organisation and, if I find a companion on this path, then continue the journey with him (sic). From that day till today, and till the upcoming Jharkhand Assembly elections, all options are open for me in this journey”.

A companion in BJP?

The former CM’s message on X has widely been viewed in political circles as his parting note to the JMM and that the companion he seeks to find for his forward journey could likely be the BJP. Sources in the JMM told The Federal that Hemant Soren and his wife, Gandey MLA Kalpana Soren, had tried to reach out to Champai with a peace offering over the weekend but the sulking party veteran remained incommunicado.

“The leadership is still trying to reach out to him (Champai) because everyone in the party holds him in very high regard. He fought alongside Dishom Guru (Shibu Soren) in the Jharkhand (statehood) movement and is our seniormost leader today, and we believe he will never do anything that will harm the party but whether he is willing to listen to our leadership is entirely up to him... His statement is unfortunate and it seems he has made up his mind to go; we can only try to stop him,” a JMM MLA told The Federal.

Advantage BJP

Whether or not Champai joins the BJP, sources in the JMM-Congress alliance admit that his public expression of hurt at the way his party treated him over the past two months “does not augur well” for the INDIA bloc.

“After Shibu Soren and Hemant Soren, Champai is our tallest mass leader in the state. He is well-regarded and has a strong influence over the tribal-dominated Kolhan region (comprising 14 Assembly seats, including nine reserved for Scheduled Tribes, across East Singhbhum, West Singhbhum, and Seraikella districts). If he quits the JMM before the election, we will obviously be at a disadvantage, especially in Kolhan, and if he switches to the BJP, he might help the BJP gain electorally in tribal areas which had overwhelmingly voted for the JMM in the 2019 Assembly polls and the recent Lok Sabha polls,” a Congress MP from Jharkhand said.

A damning picture

Champai’s rebellion, INDIA bloc leaders say, comes at a time when internal surveys conducted by the JMM and the Congress to gauge voter sentiment ahead of the Assembly polls have projected a damning picture. Sources said the latest assessment by poll strategists for the ruling alliance was that the JMM-Congress and RJD coalition, which had won 47 of Jharkhand’s 81 Assembly segments in 2019, was “certain to lose a dozen seats if elections were held now and would find it difficult to retain another 10 seats where the BJP appears to be gaining ground”.

The assessment was also conveyed to Jharkhand Congress leaders during a meeting convened by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge in Delhi earlier this month, a leader privy to the discussions said.

“The surveys point at growing anti-incumbency because the government has not been able to deliver on many of its big poll promises. The JMM leadership has tried to explain this by asserting that for the past five years, the BJP’s central government starved the state of funds while simultaneously trying to topple our government repeatedly and also threaten our leaders with investigations and arrests. While this may be true, the public doesn’t care; it wants delivery and our surveys say the government hasn’t performed well on this count,” an alliance leader told The Federal.

The tribal-non-tribal divide

The leader added, “There is also growing resentment among non-tribals who feel Hemant Soren has worked only for adivasis while the Congress is also facing its own share of problems, with a majority of its MLAs having become extremely unpopular in their constituencies. Now, with elections round the corner, we can also count on the BJP’s attempt at polarising the electorate... signs are already clear with Himanta being made the in-charge of Jharkhand and the sudden political unrest brewing in the state over the issue of the growing population of illegal Bangladeshi Muslim migrants in the Santhal Parganas”.

The recent Lok Sabha polls, too, had exposed chinks in the ruling coalition’s strength. Of Jharkhand’s 14 Lok Sabha seats, the BJP had managed to bag eight, while its ally, the AJSU, wrested one, leaving the JMM and the Congress with just three and two seats, respectively, in their kitty. All five seats (Lohardaga, Khunti, Rajmahal, Dumka, and Singhbhum) won by the INDIA allies were reserved for the STs while the BJP bagged all the general category seats, showing a distinct polarisation in party preference among the tribals and non-tribals.

Breaking down the Lok Sabha results into Assembly segment-wise leads for parties also showed that the JMM and the Congress led in just 15 and 14 assembly segments, respectively, while the BJP took a lead across 46 Assembly constituencies. The half-way mark in the Jharkhand Assembly is 41.

Champai not the only one?

With elections due in the state in November, the usual scenes of MLAs and leaders defecting to other parties is likely to start soon. There is already speculation that Champai may not be the lone JMM leader exploring the possibility of finding a new “companion” in the BJP. Names of at least six other JMM MLAs, five of them from the Kolhan region, have been doing the rounds as being among possible BJP-bound defectors.

There are also rumours that the Shibu Soren family, too, might witness a second betrayal after Hemant’s sister-in-law Sita Soren’s pre-Lok Sabha poll defection to the BJP, as the CM’s younger brother and Dumka MLA, Basant Soren, is known to be sulking ever since he was kept out of the state Cabinet in the July reshuffle.

Unsurprisingly, a majority of JMM leaders speculated to being tapped by the BJP are tribals, a community the saffron party needs to assiduously court in its bid to win Jharkhand. If Champai indeed joins the saffron ranks, he will no doubt be a prize catch for the party. Champai would obviously need to extract hefty assurances for himself (possibly including a ticket for his eldest son, which the JMM was reportedly unwilling to offer) from the BJP, but the full extent of these will only be known in due course. For the JMM, Champai’s imminent departure may not be the only challenge that awaits as the party prepares to go into the ensuing poll battle.