(From left) Arjun Munda and Babulal Marandi dance to the beats of mandar to mark Sohrai. Picture by Ashok Karan

Ranchi, Jan. 8: Ministers, and House members turned out in large numbers to attend the Sohrai celebrations being held at the residence of former chief minister Babulal Marandi.

Marandi had organised a get-together, on the occasion of Sohrai, an agricultural festival of the Santhals, which saw a host of senior BJP leaders attending the function.

The programme went smoothly till it was time for the speeches. Confusion prevailed at this time, when senior tribal leaders of the party chose to speak in Santhali. The former agriculture minister, Devidhan Besra, was the first one who started the ?trend?.

State human resource development minister Pradeep Yadav looked lost. His department may have been planning in terms of setting up independent departments for different tribal languages for quite a while now, but the man found himself gazing around at the Sohrai festival celebrations. It seemed that the BJP VIPs sitting at the front seat just gazed around in confusion, talked between themselves and decided to play with their swanky mobile sets during the speech. In the 20-minute speech, some ministers were found laughing out loud, whenever the crowd laughed, ?reacting? to a joke. As the crowd became quiet, they too would do the same.

?How do we get to know what they are saying ? The language is so very difficult that we are not able to understand a single bit of it. Some of the terms though sounded a bit familiar. But then they are senior leaders and it would not look decent to just stand up and walk out,? said one of the leaders, adding: ?Jaatiyan alag hai par party to ek hai.? (Our castes might be different but then the party is one). Marandi, however, understood the problem and opted to speak in Hindi. But then he added a bit of Santhali towards the end.