Leader of the JMM legislative party Champai Soren took the oath of office as Jharkhand’s chief minister at the Raj Bhavan in Ranchi on February 2. This occurs two days following Hemant Soren’s ED arrest and resignation as CM.
Following his appeal to the governor to grant his request to form the government as soon as possible, Champai Soren was named chief minister on Thursday. The state had been in “confusion” since Hemant Soren’s resignation on Wednesday, which exacerbated the political crisis. According to Rajesh Thakur, the chief of the state Congress, which is a part of the alliance formed by the JMM, Champai Soren has been given ten days to demonstrate the legitimacy of his government.
The 67-year-old tribal chieftain took the oath of office as the state’s 12th chief minister. He is the sixth chief minister from the Kolhan region of Jharkhand, which includes the districts of Seraikela-Kharsawan, West Singhbhum, and East Singhbhum.
Senior Congressman Alamgir Alam and RJD leader Satyanand Bhokta took the oath of office as cabinet members during the occasion.
Champai Soren is the eldest son of Simal Soren, a farmer from the Jilinggoda village in the Saraikela-Kharsawan district. He received education up to Class 10 from a government school. He got married at a young age and have four sons and three daughters. Soren actively participated in the Jharkhand movement in the late 90s along with Shibu Soren, and soon gained fame as the ‘Jharkhand Tiger.’ He had started his political career by becoming an independent MLA through a by-election on the Saraikela seat in 1991. Four years later, he contested the assembly polls from the seat on the JMM ticket and defeated the BJP’s Panchu Tudu. In the 2000 assembly elections, he was defeated from the same constituency by the BJP’s Anant Ram Tudu. He regained the seat in 2005 as defeating the BJP candidate by a margin of only 880 votes. Soren won the subsequent elections in 2009, 2014 and 2019. He served as a cabinet minister in the BJP government headed by Arjun Munda between September 2010 to January 2013. When Hemant Soren formed a government in the state in 2019, Champai Soren became the Minister of Food and Civil Supplies and Transport.
In the meantime, the majority coalition in the 81-member Jharkhand Assembly is composed of 47 MLAs: JMM 29, Congress 17, and RJD 1. The AJSU Party has three members, whereas the BJP has 26. There are two Independents in addition to the one lawmaker each for the NCP and CPI (ML). In an effort to ring-fence the JMM-led alliance’s lawmakers from a potential BJP recruiting attempt, they are being brought to Hyderabad. Hyderabad is the capital of Telangana which is governed by the Congress.
