12th slot remains vacant, portfolios soon
Ranchi, February 16: Basant Soren, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) supremo Shibu Soren’s youngest son, on Friday took oath as minister in the Champai Soren-led government in Jharkhand, along with seven others.
However, the 12th slot of cabinet minister has been kept vacant and the name of Latehar JMM MLA Baidyanath Ram was removed from the list at the last minute by the chief minister allegedly due to pressure from the Congress MLAs.
Incidentally, the 12th cabinet slot remained vacant even during four years tenure of former chief minister Hemant Soren. As per constitutional provisions, the state can have 12 ministers along with the CM.
Basant is also the younger brother of former Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren, who is in judicial custody in a money laundering case linked to an alleged land scam.
The new faces in the 12-member cabinet are JMM’s Chaibasa MLA Deepak Birua and Basant Soren.
The only cabinet minister during Hemant Soren tenure who has been axed is Manoharpur MLA Joba Manjhi.
Basant Soren was elected as an MLA from Dumka assembly constituency, after he defeated BJP’s Louis Marandi with a margin of 6,842 votes in a by-poll held in November 2020.
Birua won the Chaibasa seat by defeating BJP’s J B Tubid by more than 26,000 votes in the 2019 assembly polls.
Those who retained their ministerial berths include Rameshwar Oraon, Banna Gupta and Badal Patralekh of the Congress in addition to JMM’s Mithilesh Kumar Thakur, Hafizul Hasan and Bebi Devi.
Governor C P Radhakrishnan administered the oath of office and secrecy to the ministers.
The oath-taking ceremony was held at the Birsa Mandap of Raj Bhavan in presence of senior leaders of the JMM-led alliance and other government officials.
“The portfolios will be distributed today. We will take forward the work of Jharkhand’s development after assigning responsibilities to every minister,” the CM said.
Earlier on February 2, 67-year-old Champai Soren was sworn in as the 12th chief minister of the state, while senior Congress leader Alamgir Alam and RJD leader Satyanand Bhokta took oath as ministers.
JMM executive president Hemant Soren was arrested by the ED on January 31, shortly after he resigned as the chief minister.
The JMM-led alliance in the state has 47 MLAs – JMM-29, Congress-17 and one of the RJD – in the 81-member assembly.
The BJP has 26 legislators and the AJSU Party has three. The NCP and CPI (ML) have one lawmaker each, apart from two Independents. There is also a nominated member.
Cong MLAs miffed at vacant cabinet berth
Ranchi, February 16:Over 10 Congress MLAs are learnt to be planning for a meeting with party high command in Delhi with their demand for a berth in the cabinet.
Though all the Congress MLAs attended the swearing in ceremony but it was learnt that they were not happy at the 12th slot being kept vacant and not given to Congress despite their demand since the formation of the government in December 2019 to accommodate their MLA.
There were also talks of Congress MLAs keeping themselves closed at a room in Circuit House of Ranchi and leaving for Raj Bhawan to attend the swearing in ceremony after persuasion of senior leader Alamgir Alam.