With Hemant Soren set to face the Enforcement Directorate on January 31 in an alleged money laundering case, there are whiffs of his wife Kalpana taking over as the Jharkhand chief minister in case he is arrested.
Hemant Soren, say sources, made the announcement at a meeting of the MLAs of the ruling alliance this evening. The MLAs have agreed since preservation of the government is crucial at this point.
“We, all the MLAs of the alliance, of Congress, are fully supporting the Chief Minister,” Banna Gupta, the state’s health minister who belongs to the Congress, told reporters on Tuesday.
It’s not the first time this has happened. Following his imprisonment, former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav appointed his wife, Rabri Devi, as the state’s chief minister. It is now expected that Jharkhand, a state created as a result of Bihar’s partition, will see a similar trajectory.
Hemant Soren has allegedly planned to designate Kalpana as the next Chief Minister of Jharkhand in the event that he is taken into custody by the ED, according to BJP leader Nishikant Dubey. Dubey asserted, nevertheless, that Hemant Soren’s proposal was rejected by a few MLAs.
