RANCHI: The countdown for Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren has begun. His Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) coalition government is keeping its fingers crossed hoping Soren would complete his tenure by this year-end. But Soren apparently is preparing for the worst, expecting a knock from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to arrest him any time now.
He has already ignored seven ED summons to appear before it in person in connection with a land scam case. The ED was legally empowered to seek a non-bailable arrest warrant (NBW) against Soren from a court of law after he skipped the third summons. Yet, it decided to play mind games and served four more summons, perhaps to neutralise the sympathy factor politicians hope to whip up under such circumstances, circling its prey and waiting for the right time to strike.
Soren fears appearing before the ED would be a one-way ticket to jail. As such, he has set in motion what is being called Plan B to do a Lalu Yadav in the state. When Lalu was arrested in the fodder scam case while he was the Bihar CM in 1997, he got his spouse Rabri Devi to occupy the hot seat. The buzz is Soren likewise hopes to install his wife Kalpana as CM whenever he is arrested.
The contours of his political survival strategy spilled out recently after the resignation of senior JMM MLA from the Gandey constituency, Sarfaraz Ahmed, for no apparent reason. His is a safe general seat from where the BJP lost thrice in four consecutive elections. The buzz is he sacrificed it to let Soren field Kalpana from Gandey. For the record, Soren rubbished speculation on giving the Gandey ticket to Kalpana, saying it was a figment of the BJP’s fertile imagination. Yet, the chatter refuses to die down. But what is the land scam case all about?
Land scam
It all began after an FIR on money laundering was registered at the Bariatu Police Station in Ranchi against Pradip Bagchi, a close associate of shady IAS officer Chhavi Ranjan, based on a complaint from the Ranchi Municipal Corporation. The ED then took the probe lead and uncovered a land mafia that used to forge legacy records in Kolkata and Ranchi, and was active in Jharkhand. During the 41 searches and five surveys it conducted, the agency found incriminating evidence like forged seals of the land revenue department, forged land deeds, records of the distribution of proceeds, photographs of doing forgery and evidence of giving bribes to government officials.
Later, based on an FIR registered at the Sadar police station for the fraudulent sale of a one-acre plot in upscale Cheshire Home Road in Ranchi, well-known businessman Bishnu Kumar Agrawal was arrested on August 1 last year. Besides the Cheshire Home Road property and a 9.3-acre plot at Namkum, Agrawal, in connivance with Chhavi Ranjan and others, also bought a 5.83-acre plot at Bariatu in Ranchi through fake papers, as the actual owner of the property since 1949 is the Indian defence establishment.
As for Agrawal, runs multiple shopping malls and various other business establishments. The probe agency accuses him of being habitually involved in acquiring land illegally in connivance with government officials like Chhavi Ranjan. After arresting Agrawal, Soren was summoned for the first time to the ED office for questioning, but he refused to show up.
As of now, 13 people, including Chhavi Ranjan, are under custody over the fraud. The ED registered two separate cases in connection with the land scam, based on two FIRs registered with the Bariatu and Sadar police stations in Ranchi. The ED has already attached two land parcels worth `74.38 crore in the case. While one of them measures 4.55 acres - with a commercial value of `41.51 crore - and is located at Bariatu, the other one with an area of 7.16 acres at Bajra has a commercial value of `32.87 crore.
Summons after summons
Soren avoided seven ED summonses in the land scam case, giving one excuse after another. He dodged the first one on August 14 last year by writing to the ED, asking it to withdraw the summons and threatening to take legal action. But the ED issued its second summons, asking him to appear before it on August 24. Soren missed it and wrote to the ED saying he has filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court challenging the summons, yet he got the third summons. Even before the SC disposed of his petition, the fourth summons came demanding his appearance on September 23.
Soren sought relief from the Jharkhand High Court, but a few days later, the ED issued its fifth summons asking him to appear on October 4. No show again, so he was called for questioning for the sixth time on December 12, but missed it. He was given a last chance to appear on December 29, with the ED letting him decide the time, date and place for its officers to come and record his statement, yet he refused.
On January 2, Soren sent a three-page letter to the ED questioning its motive and indicating he won’t appear before it. He went on to allege that issuing a series of summons was an attempt to malign his image. He also complained that the press gets all information ahead of each summons, triggering an unfair media trial.
Office of profit case
Another charge Soren faced earlier was while he was handling the mining portfolio. It was alleged that he allotted a stone chips mining lease to himself in 2021, flouting the office of profit norms. On February 10 last year, a BJP delegation met former Governor Ramesh Bais and demanded Soren’s disqualification as a legislator. Bais forwarded the BJP’s memorandum to the Election Commission of India, which sent its recommendation to the Raj Bhavan in August last year. Its contents are yet to be made public.
But present Governor C P Radhakrishnan on December 12 reignited a spark saying he is examining the ECI report, which suggested the office of profit case is still open. Soren had been grilled by the ED for nearly 10 hours on November 18, 2022, in that case.
Why Gandey seat
Sarfaraz Ahmed, who mysteriously resigned from Gandey, first entered the poll fray from there on an RJD ticket in 2005 but was defeated by JMM’s Salkhan Soren. In 2009, he got a Congress ticket and extracted revenge by defeating JMM’s Soren. In 2014, the Congress repeated him from Gandey but he lost to the BJP’s J P Verma due to the Modi wave. In 2019, when the seat went to the JMM as it was contesting as part of a pre-poll alliance that included the Congress and the RJD, Sarfaraz coolly jumped ship to the JMM and wrested the seat.
With the JMM-RJD-Congress alliance in Jharkhand fully supported by the Left parties, it would be impossible for the BJP to defeat any common candidate fielded by them, making it a safe seat. Kalpana Soren hails from Odisha, so she is not legally eligible to contest elections from a reserved seat in Jharkhand. That’s why Gandey is significant. It’s a general category seat that could ease the path for her entry into the assembly.
Bypoll or not
The BJP cites case laws barring by-elections if a seat falls vacant with less than a year of the assembly’s tenure left. To do so, it begins its counting from December 23, 2019, the day the results of the fifth Jharkhand Vidhan Sabha elections were declared. Since Sarfaraz’s resignation was accepted on December 31, 2023, Gandey fell vacant eight days short of a year, it claims. But the JMM applies a different yardstick. It argues that the first session of the fifth Jharkhand Assembly was convened on January 6, 2020. According to Article 172 of the Constitution, the tenure of the fifth Jharkhand Assembly is till January 5, 2025, so Gandey very much eligible for bypolls, it reasons.
ED probing two cases
The ED is probing two major cases of money laundering in Jharkhand. The first relates to illegal mining in Sahibganj in which the CM was questioned on November 17 last year. The second one is about the alleged land scam in Ranchi for which Soren has ignored ED summons seven times.
Other politicos facing ED heat
THE KEJRIWAL PARALLEL
1 . Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal recently ignored the ED’s third consecutive summons to appear in connection with the excise policy scam, which gave the agency the right to seek an NBW against him. This newspaper was the first to break the story on the scam.
2 . Kejriwal instead sought to take the moral high ground on January 4, claiming the BJP government wanted to tarnish his image and asserted that his honesty is his biggest asset. “My lawyers have told me that the ED summons are illegal. BJP wants to arrest me to stop me from campaigning for Lok Sabha polls,” alleged Kejriwal, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convener.
3 . He said he has written to the ED, saying their summonses are illegal but has not got any response. “They haven’t replied because they know that their summonses are illegal. Should I follow illegal summons? If legally sound summons will be issued, I will follow them. My greatest wealth is my honesty. They want to break me by tarnishing my image,” he said.
KALPANA SOREN
Kalpana Soren, 48, hails from a business family in Mayurbhanj district in Odisha. She had been maintaining distance from active politics till last year, but started accompanying Soren to various events ever since the office of profit case surfaced. Kalpana runs a private school and several other businesses. She is said to be particularly interested in schemes that empower women.