Shibu Soren

Ranchi/Bokaro, Dec. 23: Even before the results were announced, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) chief Shibu Soren was a picture of confidence.

Speaking to The Telegraph from his Bokaro home in the morning, Soren made his stand clear. Nothing less than the chief minister’s chair would do for his party. “Look at the results. They just show my rising popularity. Which leader of the state can match me?” challenged the grand old man of Jharkhand politics, grinning as he added for good measure that none of the so-called powerful leaders of BJP or Congress were even a patch on him.

Written off over and over again ever since he was first arrested in 1996 by the CBI in connection with the 1993 P.V.Narasimha Rao pay off case, Soren today proved to the world that he had that uncanny knack of springing back to centre stage whenever the situation demanded.

Political pundits and even many within the JMM had written off Soren when in January this year, he joined the select band of chief ministers who were forced to quit after losing at the hustings. Soren lost the Tamar seat to a then little-known Independent, Gopal Krishna Patar.

Soren was sworn-in as the seventh chief minister of Jharkhand in August 27, 2008, after the then chief minister Madhu Koda was forced to resign. Soren, then a Union minister, quit his Lok Sabha seat and decided to contest from Tamar, a seat which had fallen vacant after its sitting MLA Ramesh Singh Munda was murdered by extremists.

Unfortunately for the JMM chief, Patar trounced him, forcing him to give up the chief minister’s chair after remaining in office for barely four months.

Earlier in 2005, Soren also did not find luck by his side after he was sworn in as chief minister only to quit nine days later as he failed to muster a simple majority in the 81 member Jharkhand Assembly.

Analysing the JMM and Soren’s comeback, his long time ally Shailendra Bhattacharya, a party central committee member, pointed out that their decision to coax the party chief to go it alone was the key behind the 2009 poll success.

'We were in constant touch with the masses. Though two of our former ministers, Sudhir Mahto and Dulal Bhuiyan lost, it is obvious that our party has found the Midas touch all over again with the solid support of all sections of people,” Bhattacharya said.

A truck with the Congress would have cost the JMM dear. Past experiences have proved that a Congress-JMM tie up has always benefited the BJP. “Our going it alone has been proved correct,” a jubilant Bhattacharya stressed.

Over the years, Soren’s political career has been characterised by his tryst with the chief minister’s chair on one hand and successive jail terms on the other.

Arrested for the first time by the CBI in 1996, the JMM chief was forced to resign from the Union council of ministers thrice— after arrest warrants were announced in the Chirudih murder case in 2004 and after being convicted in the Shashi Nath Jha murder case in 2006.

In 2005, he was forced to quit as Union coal minister when as part of a Congress-JMM deal, he was sworn in as chief minister of Jharkhand, only to resign nine days later.