New Delhi, April 30
The BJP parliamentary board today formally decided not to pull out of the four-month old coalition government it is sharing with the JMM leader Shibu Soren in Jharkhand.

But with the JMM leader Hemant Soren having offered in writing the Chief Minister’s post to the BJP, it has simultaneously decided to defer the decision on who among them would lead the alternate government there.

The party has left it to its president Nitin Gadkari to work out the logistics of the whole exercise, disclosed party leader Gopinath Munde. But privately party sources hinted that there’s a tie for the CM post between former state Chief Minister Arjun Munda and Hazaribagh MP Yashwant Sinha, with the dice tilting more towards Sinha. In every successive governments of the state while the Chief Minister has been a tribal leader, Babulal Marandi, Arjun Munda or Soren, the deputy CM slot goes to a non-tribal. This time, the deputy CM-slot may be filled by a tribal, Hemant Soren, so the BJP, with a predominantly non-tribal vote bank, would prefer a non-tribal for the top post. There are two BJP leaders from Jharkhand meeting these qualifications, Sinha and the sitting deputy CM Raghubar Das. But the high command seems to prefer Sinha to Das.

Formally, BJP parliamentary party deputy leader in the Lok Sabha, Munde disclosed, “The party has asked all its MLAs, JMM MLAs and Hemant Soren to come to Delhi and discuss with them its future course of action.”