With the Congress in Jharkhand cosying up to the ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha amid the latter’s feelings of disappointment with its ally BJP that heads the state government, BJP legislators on Friday accused the Congress of trying to destabilise the coalition government.
Hectic parleys were on between leaders of the JMM and the Opposition Congress in Jharkhand capital Ranchi for the second day on Friday and speculations were rife that the Congress had promised the Shibu Soren-led regional party that it would welcome Soren’s son and deputy chief minister Hemant Soren as chief minister if the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and the Congress eventually formed an alliance government.
In the Assembly, senior BJP legislator and former minister Raghubar Das led the party’s vociferous allegations that the Congress was working hard to break the four-party alliance government formed just 18 months ago.
He pointed at newspaper reports having speculated about such efforts some three months back.
BJP sources in Jharkhand said their leaders believed that the Congress had deliberately leaked the CAG report on the massive coal scam in order to pressurise the JMM into ditching the BJP.
Much of the scam, they alleged, had been perpetrated during JMM supremo Shibu Soren’s term as Union coal minister.
Senior Congress MLA Rajendra Singh strongly refuted the BJP’s charges of efforts to destabilise the government, but sly statements by Union tourism minister and Ranchi MP Subodhkant Sahay and several rounds of political meetings between Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and Congress leaders indicated otherwise.
“The aims the BJP had right on the day of government formation were being proved one by one. They put up a superrich candidate for the Rajya Sabha who was so impudent that he spoke against Advani. Now they (JMM) have said they might withdraw support. In such an event the Congress will not sit as a mute spectator. We will respond suitably,” Mr Subodhkant Sahay told journalists.