Jharkhand’s BJP-led coalition government on Monday slumped to the verge of becoming a minority government and gasped for survival after its enraged ally JMM announced its decision to withdraw support after a wobbly 28-month partnership.
JMM chief and MP Shibu Soren said after presiding over the party’s executive committee meeting in state capital Ranchi that there was no scope left for rapprochement with the BJP and that the JMM would submit a letter to governor Syed Ahmed for withdrawal of support from the Arjun Munda-led government on Tuesday. Mr Soren made it clear that the post-poll alliance between the two previously rival parties, formed in the wake of the fractured verdict in the 2009 Assembly polls, was finally over.
“We have decided to withdraw from the government. We are meeting the governor tomorrow with the letter,” said Mr Soren, declining to reveal if the JMM would take the support of other parties to continue in government without the BJP, and who he would prefer to be chief minister.
But Mr Soren’s son, deputy chief minister Hemant Soren, appeared hopeful about the BJP yielding to the regional party’s demand for Mr Munda’s resignation to make space for a JMM leader to become CM. “We have decided to withdraw support and authorised Guruji (Sibu Soren) to take a final call. Now it is the BJP’s responsibility to decide what it wants to do about this,” he said after the meeting.
Hemant Soren also said the JMM was hurt by “frequently insulting statements” issued by a BJP MP from Santhal Pargana aga-inst “Guruji” and would like an apology from him. He was referring to Godda MP Nishikant Dubey, who reacted saying there was “absolutely no need to apologise for telling the truth”.
BJP leaders held an emergency meeting Monday evening at the party’s state headquarters attended, among others, by Mr Munda, BJP’s Jharkhand in-charge Dharmendra Pradhan, Hazaribagh MP Yashwant Sinha and all the 18 MLAs. Mr Pradhan had said earlier in the day that the BJP would not yield to the “politics of setting conditions”.