Ranchi, July 13: Well-behaved, hardly skips dinner with his family and loves globe-trotting. That’s Hemant Soren, nudging 38, Jharkhand’s latest chief minister.

Dumka MLA Hemant, also three-time Jharkhand chief minister Shibu Soren’s second son, is ushering the cult of a dynasty for the first time in Jharkhand.

Family tragedy brought him to the JMM centrestage in 2009 when elder brother Durga — then Jama MLA — died in May. Durga, eldest of four Soren siblings — Basant and Anjali being the others — had long been considered as Shibu’s “natural heir”.

With him gone, the onus of assuming more responsibility of the state’s leading regional party — with mercurial ups and downs and a history of spectacular dalliances with national parties BJP and Congress — shifted to soft-spoken Hemant.

Perhaps, to the ire of bhabhi Sita.

As deputy chief minister in the Arjun Munda-led government, Hemant held key portfolios like finance, mines and geology, among others. But though affable, he has largely been in his father’s shadow. This is Hemant’s first opportunity to prove his own mettle.

He’s also come a long way from his initial shyness. Earlier, faced with a volley of questions, he would say, “hame dekhna hai (we need to see)” and “hame sochna hai (we need to think)”. Now, his own partymen admit that his grasp and articulation have improved.

He may lack the stinging repartee of his father or the sense of humour of Babulal Marandi and Arjun Munda, but he’s doing better.

“Hemant’s biggest plus is that he is a very peace-loving person and never gets provoked in the gravest of situations,” says Sanjiv Kumar, Rajya Sabha MP and long time family friend who came to Ranchi earlier in the week to attend the swearing-in.

JMM general secretary Vinod Pandey, also a Soren loyalist, agrees. “I have never seen him lose his cool.”

Could be true. Politicians know how coolly he pulled the rug from under the feet of the Arjun Munda government to fulfil his own personal ambitions.