Hemant Soren takes oath as 14th Jharkhand Chief Minister

Hemant Soren, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) supremo, on Thursday took oath as Jharkhand’s Chief Minister (CM) for the fourth time.

Jharkhand Governor Santosh Kumar Gangwar sworn in the 49-year-old Hemant as the CM at a grand ceremony at Morabadi Ground at Ranchi at four in the afternoon on Thursday.

Putting up a show of unity INDIA bloc leaders turned up in large numbers for the swearing in ceremony of Soren. Top Opposition leaders who attended the event included AICC President Mallikarjun Kharge, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, NCP Chief Sharad Pawar, Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann, Himachal Pradesh CM Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, AAP chief and former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, former Maharashtra CM and Shiv Sena (UBT) Uddhav Thackeray, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, former J&K CM Mehbooba Mufti, and former Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav and Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar.

Notably, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) led by Mamata Banerjee is playing truant with the Congress-led INDIA bloc in Delhi by refusing to cooperate with the group in the Parliament. This, however, did not become an impediment for her attending Soren’s oath ceremony and rubbing shoulders with the other Opposition leaders present at the function.

Soren refrained from inducting any minister in his cabinet today. The cabinet expansion is expected to take place after the vote of confidence in the assembly.

Jharkhand can have a council of ministers of up to 12 members. It is believed that Congress will get four posts, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) one, and the CPI(ML) (L) may get one berth. The remaining six posts will go to JMM. In the recently concluded elections, the JMM-led alliance had won 56 seats in the 81-member Assembly. While JMM itself won 34 seats, its INDIA allies Congress RJD and CPI(ML) (L) won 16, four and two seats each. Soren retained his Barhait seat and defeated BJP’s Gamliyel Hembrom by a margin of 39,791 votes.

The BJP-led NDA, on the other hand, won 24 seats with BJP alone winning 21 seats. After his arrest earlier this year by the ED in a money laundering case linked to an alleged land scam, Soren made a stunning comeback in the Assembly elections.