Guwahati: Buses carrying members of the ruling coalition were seen leaving the Ranchi residence of Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Saturday afternoon amid the political unrest in Jharkhand.
It was decided to relocate the lawmakers in response to rumours that CM Soren might not be eligible to serve as an MLA after a UPA meeting.
The ruling alliance contains 30 Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) MLAs, 18 Congress MLAs, and one Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MLA in the 81-member Jharkhand Assembly.
On Friday, CM Soren refuted claims that he had heard from the Election Commission of India or Governor Ramesh Bais over claims that the election authority had “recommended his disqualification as an MLA.”
Following rumours in the media that the ECI had informed the Governor of Soren’s disqualification, the Chief Minister’s office issued a statement on Thursday.
“The Chief Minister is apprised of several media reports about ECI sending a report to Honorable Governor -Jharkhand ‘apparently recommending his disqualification as an MLA’. No communication in this regard has been received by CMO from either ECI or Governor,” read the statement.
According to a Times Now story, Soren claimed that the main opposition party in Jharkhand, the BJP, which has 25 MLAs, “wrote” the EC report to overthrow the Jharkhand government.
The trail of events gained pace after Nishikant Dubey, BJP Member of Parliament from Godda, Jharkhand, tweeted that a letter from the ECI has reached the Raj Bhavan.
According to the BJP, Soren should be disqualified from serving as an MLA since in 2021, when he was the mines minister, he gave himself a mining lease. The BJP petitioned the Governor in February of this year to remove Soren from the House of Representatives in accordance with Section 9(A) of the Representation of Peoples Act.
In May, the election panel sent a notice to the leader of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha after the Governor sent an ECI complaint from the BJP.
On Monday, the ECI closed the hearing for the Hemant Soren mining lease case.