BJP still unsure on next Jharkhand CM

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May 11: Jharkhand’s prolonged political uncertainty deepened further on Tuesday as the BJP’s two central observers failed to decide the party’s chief ministerial candidate through talks with the MLAs in Ranchi and an equally divided JMM debated if letting the BJP to head the government for the rest of its term was the

right decision. Despite one-to-one talks with all the 18 BJP legislators, the party’s central observers — former national president Rajtah Singh and senior general secretary Ananth Kumar — could not reach a consensus on which leader from the party would replace outgoing chief minister Shibu Soren of the JMM. Mr Singh, an old Jharkhand hand, tried his best to bring all the MLAs to agree on a single name, but his efforts failed reportedly due to multi-layer divisions of opinion among the MLAs.
Sources said hectic lobbying unleashed by former chief minister Arjun Munda and current deputy chief minister Raghubar Das for the top post through individual MLAs owing allegiance to them torpedoed the BJP’s plans to finalise Jharkhand’s next chief minister by Tuesday evening and ask Soren to step down on Wednesday morning. With a consensus eluding and fears of factionalism taking over high, the BJP’s Jharkhand in-charge Karuna Shukla later said the party would finalise the name in “two or three days”.
Both Mr Singh and Mr Kumar, who evaded the media all day just like some BJP legislators spoke only cryptically, are likely to submit their findings on the MLAs’ opinions to the party’s parliamentary board on Wednesday before any final decision would be made.
“Besides the MLAs’ obvious disagreement, our (BJP) central leadership also appears undecided about a tribal or non-tribal CM. Another factor under consideration is the opposition from a section of BJP leaders in Jharkhand to the very idea of our heading the government with the unreliable JMM’s support,” said a senior BJP leader. The JMM’s central executive and MLAs meeting, chaired by Shibu Soren, was attended by only nine of the party’s 18 MLAs. “Half of our MLAs do not want to let the BJP head the government for the full term,” said MLA Simon Marandi.
The JMM has certainly not reached any final decision yet,” said senior leader and MLA Simon Marandi, who stayed away from the meeting, to this newspaper.
After the BJP leaders learnt of the possibility of the JMM rethinking its plans, efforts were made to arrange a meeting between Mr Soren’s son and JMM legislative party leader Hemant Soren with the BJP’s central observers at a Ranchi hotel late in the evening.