RANCHI: Finally, Basant Soren, younger brother of jailed former Chief Minister Hemant Soren, gets Cabinet berth as Chief Minister Champai Soren expanded his Cabinet on Friday.
CP Radhakrishnan administered the oath of a total of eight ministers which includes Mithilesh Thakur, Hafizul Hassan, Baby Devi, Basant Soren and Deepak Birua from JMM quota and Banna Gupta, Dr-Rameshwar Oraon and Badal from Congress quota.
Chief Minister Champai Soren (JMM) had taken oath with two ministers: Alamgir Alam of the Congress party and the lone RJD MLA, Satyanand Bhokta on February 2.
Out of the eight ministers who took oath on Friday, there are two new faces: Basant Soren and Deepak Birua. At the same time, former Minister Joba Manjhi has been dropped from the new Cabinet.
Interestingly, Latehar legislator Baidyanath Ram, who was also supposed to take oath on Friday, did not make it to the Cabinet in the last minute due to protests from the Congress MLAs.
Ram was number 2 in the list of candidates, sent to Raj Bhawan. However he was strikes off the list in the last minute. Expressing anger on the turn of events, Ram said that the JMM decision had not sent a good message,-particularly to the Scheduled Caste community.
“I have taken this humiliation seriously and will react to it. Ek do din mein result ayega (the result will come in a day or two),” said Ram.
JMM chief Shibu Soren’s elder daughter in law Sita Soren was also supposed to take-oath as minister but, surprisingly her name was missing from the list.
Congress, however, frustrated the JMM’s plan to induct a member of Scheduled Caste community in the cabinet and finally prevailed over the JMM leadership to leave the 12th berth vacant.
The Congress MLAs were eyeing the 12th berth and wanted to replace some ministers from the party quota.
Meanwhile, at least 10 disgruntled Congress MLAs have started protesting against the decision of retaining the old faces and are likely to fly to Delhi late in the evening to express their dissatisfaction before the high command.
They were not ready to take part in the oath taking ceremony initially, but after hours long efforts from State-Congress in-charge Ghulam Ahmed Mir and Rajesh Thakur, the MLAs agreed to attend the event.
The majority alliance in the Jharkhand-assembly has 47 MLAs - JMM 29, Congress 17 and RJD 1. The BJP has 26 members and the AJSU Party has three. The NCP and CPI (ML) have one MLA each, along with two other independent members. There is also one nominated member.