Ranchi: Dissident Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader and minister Simon Marandi was dismissed from the state Cabinet on Tuesday.
Jharkhand governor Dr Syed Ahmad gave his assent to the proposal for the removal of Marandi from the Cabinet sent to him by Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Monday. Soren had recommended the removal of Simon Marandi from the Cabinet in a clearly well-calculated move which he avoided before polls to minimize political losses to the party, something that seemed imminent to him and other party leaders then.
Marandi held the rural work, National Rural Employment Programme and Special Division and Food, Public Distribution and Consumers Affairs Ministry in the state Cabinet prior to his dismissal.
Reacting to the dismissal, Marandi said, �The CM has not taken this decision with the help of his wits, but rather following the directions of his advisor Himanshu Choudhary. I have been one of the founder members of the party. Despite this, when I demanded a ticket from the party for my son for the Rajmahal seat, no in the party listened to me. Instead, an outsider was given the ticket. I was kept in the dark till last moment on the ticket issue. In such a situation, my protest was but natural.�
The former JMM leader and ex-minister assailed the state government led by Hemant Soren. �Everything in the state government seems to be fishy and smacks of foul play. There is no rationale behind running such a government,� Marandi said.
Marandi expressed his apprehensions of getting implicated in some case at the behest of the government or may even be subjected to �threats to his life�.
Marandi had started drifting away from the JMM�s boat when the party refused to give Lok Sabha ticket to his son from Rajmahal Parliamentary constituency. He had appealed to his supporters to go all-out against JMM supremo Sibu Soren and JMM candidate from Rajmahal Vijay Hansda in an open declaration of his intentions.
With the removal of Marandi, the number of dismissals from the Jharkhand Cabinet has reached two. Earlier, the CM had led the Cabinet to remove rural development minister of Jharkhand and senior Congress leader Chandrashekhar Dubey alias Dadai Dubey.
Dubey had fallen out with the CM before being sacked by him. He later joined Trinamool Congress ahead of the Lok Sabha elections which concluded on 24th April last in Jharkhand.
Although in a controlled tone, the CM had earlier expressed his disapproval of the way a party leader of Simon Marandi�s stature had openly challenged Sibu Soren and the party ahead of the polls. He however waited for the polls to conclude to initiate disciplinary action against Marandi that finally resulted in latter�s dismissal from the state Cabinet.
It was only the elections which had saved Marandi�s ministerial berth all this long since the day he appealed his supporters to go against Sibu Soren and the party candidate, party sources said.