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Champai Soren’s government faces a floor test on Monday

New Delhi:

Newly appointed Jharkhand Chief Minister Champai Soren will have to prove his government’s majority on Monday when the state assembly opens.

Some 40 MLAs of the coalition government led by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) have been kept safely at a resort near Telangana’s capital Hyderabad to shield them from poaching attempts, ahead of the floor test.

Former Chief Minister Hemant Soren, who left the top post amid an investigation by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in an alleged corruption case, has alleged the BJP at the Centre deliberately targeted his party to weaken it before the Lok Sabha election, due in two months.

The Jharkhand assembly has 81 seats, and so the majority mark is 41.

The MLAs will be kept at a “protected place” till the floor test happens, Jharkhand Congress in-charge Ghulam Ahmad Mir told news agency ANI today.

“It’s unthinkable and unprecedented for a Chief Minister to step down and hand the reins to a party colleague. The entire coalition unanimously picked Hemant Soren’s successor and formally proposed his name as the next Chief Minister to the Governor. We are thankful to the Governor for allowing the oath ceremony to take place yesterday,” Mr Mir said.

“The alliance will be invited for a floor test in the assembly on February 5. Till then, all our MLAs will remain in a protected place,” the Congress leader said on the sidelines of the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, led by Rahul Gandhi, currently in its Jharkhand leg.

The BJP tried to destabilise the Jharkhand government, but the INDIA bloc stood up against its “conspiracy” and did not let them “steal the popular mandate”, Rahul Gandhi said yesterday when the yatra entered the state.

The practice of political parties taking their MLAs to another state run by the same parties or allies to stop attempts by rivals to contact them has come to be known as “resort politics”.

In September 2022, Hemant Soren had won a majority test with 48 votes in his favour. Then too Mr Soren’s majority test happened amid a threat of disqualification from the assembly over allegations of corruption. He had alleged the BJP tried to topple his government by engineering defections.

The JMM-Congress-Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) alliance has 46 seats – JMM 28, Congress 16, RJD 1, and CPI(ML) Liberation 1. The Jharkhand assembly has 80 seats and the majority mark is 41.

The Opposition National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which includes the BJP, All Jharkhand Students’ Union (AJSU), and the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), has 29 MLAs.

Champai Soren’s government appears set for sailing through the floor test.