Ranchi
Amid thousands of tearful eyes in attendance, the mortal remains of Dishom Guru Shibu Soren were consigned to flames on Tuesday with full State honours at his ancestral village. And, as if symbolically, the heavens too seemed to have cried as rain lashed the area adding to the congestion due to a heavy turnout of commoners, party workers and VIPs.
As Shibu’s son and Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren performed the last rites, the slogan ‘Guruji amar rahe’ (long live, guruji) rented the air. Shibu’s wife Roopi Soren was inconsolable and had to be assuaged by her daughter and daughter-in-law.
The sitting Rajya Sabha MP and JMM’s founding patron Shibu Soren breathed his last on Monday at a Delhi hospital where he was admitted more than a month ago. The 81-year-old Adivasi icon was one of the tallest tribal leaders of India, rising through the grind of both life and politics.
With a heavy rush of people and hundreds of vehicles making it worse for all to reach the venue where the last rites were to be performed, leaders like former Chief Minister Arjun Munda and former Deputy Chief Minister Sudesh Mahto chose to ride pillion on motorcycles despite the rain. to make it to the site.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi also arrived in Ranchi to will attend the last rites of the former Jharkhand CM. The duo too was stuck in the traffic jam. The two met Hemant in person later on.
Earlier in the day, Shibu’s mortal remains were kept at his official residence at Morhabadi and later at the Assembly premises too where citizens from all walks of life besides Ministers of the Hemant Soren government, Governor Santosh Gangwar, MPs and MLAs, and religious heads paid their obeisance to the departed soul.
