RANCHI: Former Jharkhand chief minister and JMM executive president Hemant Soren, arrested by Enforcement Directorate (ED) in an alleged land scam case, was on Saturday granted permission to participate in the trust vote on February 5 in state assembly.
Soren, through a petition, had requested the court to allow him to vote during the floor test. While inviting Champai Soren to take oath as new Chief Minister of Jharkhand, Governor CP Radhakrishnan had asked him to prove majority in the assembly within 10 days of taking oath.
Advocate General Rajeev Ranjan said that despite opposition by the ED counsel, the PMLA court has allowed Soren to participate in the voting.
“Former chief minister Hemant Soren has been allowed to participate in voting during the floor test, although the ED vociferously and vehemently objected to the petition. But the cat is out of the bag, that the purpose of the arrest was to pin down the government by not allowing one MLA to participate in the floor test voting,” said the Advocate General.
Therefore, the whole exercise is malafide, which was their stand from the very beginning; the petition has been rightly allowed and now Soren will participate in the voting, he said.
The court, however, rejected his request to stay in Birsa Munda jail during ED’s remand period. The court has granted permission to Soren’s wife and relatives to meet him for half-an-hour in the day, he said.
Meanwhile, the ED has started quizzing the JMM chief in case as the five-day remand of Soren started on Saturday.
Soren was brought to the zonal office of ED in Ranchi from Birsa Munda Central Jail at around 2.30 pm.
ED sources informed that evidence will be placed before the accused and he will be interrogated to know about others who were involved in the illegal acquisition of land along with the accused.
Earlier in the day, the ED arrested Baragain Revenue Inspector Bhanu Pratap Prasad, who was part of a syndicate involved in corrupt practices of acquiring properties forcefully as well as based on false deeds, falsification of government records, tampering with original revenue documents, etc.
Pratap is already in jail in another land fraud case and now has been arrested in the case in which the ED has arrested former Chief Minister Hemant Soren. He is the prime accused in the case.
According to ED, several important documents related to land were found in the raid from the house of the Sub-Inspector.
Certain documents are allegedly linked with the CM related to the alleged grab of a costly parcel of tribal land in Ranchi.
