Ranchi
- In a show of solidarity and to drive home a message to the masses, two empty chairs — one each for jailed former Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal — were kept on the stage of the INDIA bloc’s ‘Ulgulan Nyay Maharally’ in Ranchi. And they did hog the limelight.
- Ulgulan, meaning revolution, was a term coined during Birsa Munda’s fight against the British for tribal rights in the late 18th century. The bloc’s tribal outreach was thus clear.
- Hemant Soren’s wife, Kalpana Murmu Soren who has taken the political plunge and is slated to fight from the Gandey Assembly seat that goes to polls on May 20, read out a message from her husband.
- Hemant in his message stated that the BJP was trying to topple governments in opposition-ruled states but democracy cannot be allowed to fail. The ED arrested Hemant on January 31 in a case of money laundering allegedly linked to a land scam.
- Kejriwal’s better half Sunita Kejriwal, who too has gotten involved in the political mix of things after the Delhi CM’s arrest by the ED in the liquor scam on March 21, levelled a serious allegation against the BJP stating the ruling party was plotting to kill her husband in jail by denying the diabetic insulin injections.
- She further said jailing Kejriwal and Hemant without any evidence was nothing but dictatorship.
- Leaders of 28 parties including Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, former Jammu and Kashmir CM Farooq Abdullah, Punjab CM Bhagwant Singh Mann, Shiv Sena leader Priyanka Chaturvedi, TMC’s Vivek Gupta, JMM chief Shibu Soren, CPI-ML (Liberation) general secretary Deepankar Bhattacharya, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, and RJD leader and former Bihar deputy chief minister Tejaswi Yadav participated.
- But those giving the Maharally a miss included Congress leader Rahul Gandhi (said to be unwell), RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, and TMC chief and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee.
- Kharge alleged that Hemant was arrested because he refused to succumb to BJP pressure tactics and part ways with INDIA. He decried that Droupadi Murmu wasn’t made the country’s President to give due honour to tribal. The BJP’s main intention was to somehow grab the tribal votebank, he charged.
- A section of Congress workers fought with each other to protest against granting party ticket to K.N. Tripathi to contest the Chatra Lok Sabha seat even as the rally was in full swing.
A BJP delegation called on state’s chief electoral officer K Ravi Kumar and alleged that the JMM and its allies violated the model code of conduct while organising the public rally.
- Jharkhand CM Champai Soren accused the BJP-led government of traumatizing the State governments run by the opposition parties while Mann reminded how the central investigating agencies had falsely implicated the Chief Ministers of Delhi and Jharkhand.
- There are 14 Lok Sabha seats in Jharkhand with five of them reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST). The BJP and ally AJSU had won 12 of the 14 seats in 2019. This time round, the NDA is eyeing all the 14 seats in view of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for ‘Abki Baar, 400 Paar’.
- Though the BJP had won four of the five ST seats in 2019, tribals did not back it in the Assembly polls held in less than six months after the parliamentary elections. The BJP thus lost power in the State.
- And in less than two hours after Kharge’s Ranchi visit, Congress general secretary K.C. Venugopal notified that Pradip Yadav will be the party candidate for Godda Lok Sabha seat (against BJP’s sitting MP Nishikant Dubey). Earlier, Deepika Pandey Singh was declared as the Godda candidate.
- Former Union Minister Subodh Kant Sahai’s daughter Yashashvini Sahai will be contesting the Ranchi Lok Sabha seat.
