Shibu Soren

Ranchi, Aug. 4: JMM chief Shibu Soren, desperately knocking on Sonia Gandhi’s door in New Delhi to get what he was promised for his support during the Lok Sabha trust vote, has conveniently forgotten his 13-point charter of demands.

Desperate as he is to get to the Jharkhand chief minister’s chair, he has also become inaccessible to his party MPs. “I had met him three days back,” said JMM chief whip in the Lok Sabha Teklal Mahto.

Soren, however, will have to wait another 10 days till August 15 to be able to meet Sonia who will be visiting China to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics on August 7. Soren, who has openly claimed the state’s top slot, has also held out a charter of demands for Jharkhand during his meeting with Sonia’s political secretary Ahmed Patel.

The JMM’s demands include the creation of a “greater Jharkhand” by including three districts each of Orissa and Bengal, a central package of Rs 5,000 crore to fight Maoists and Rs 500 crore to tackle floods in Sahebganj, and shifting of DVC and CIL headquarters from Bengal to Jharkhand.

According to sources in the Congress, both Sonia and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are both exercised with the idea of a cabinet reshuffle to accommodate new friends of the government — the Samajwadi Party and the JMM.

There are 80 ministers in the Union cabinet and as per constitutional provisions, the strength cannot exceed 82. The Samajwadi Party wants at least eight berths while the JMM wants two. So, the two parties could be accommodated only if as many ministers were dropped from the Congress fold, the sources said.

Accordingly, one of the ministers from Jharkhand — Subodh Kant Sahay or Rameshwar Oraon — was likely to be dropped if and when Singh reshuffles his cabinet.

Teklal played down the issue. “Sonia has to take care of various issues from across the country. So, she might not have got time to meet Soren. The mist will be cleared only after we meet her and the PM,” he maintained.

As for the JMM’s demands, he said they were waiting to meet Sonia.

In Ranchi, the uncertainty of the future was keeping ministers on edge. Rural development minister Anosh Ekka, who had been in the eye of the storm, penned an article in a vernacular daily singing paeans to Guruji to try and save his berth.

But, at least three ministers have indicated their opposition to Soren’s claim of chief ministership. They include deputy chief minister Stephen Marandi, water resources minister Kamlesh Singh and science and technology minister Chandra Prakash Chaudhary.