Jharkhand Assembly Elections 2024 | The rise & fall & rise of Hemant Soren

Patna: “Katenge nahi, kutenge. (We won’t get divided and fall. We will beat them, defeat them),” JMM working president and Chief Minister of Jharkhand Hemant Soren would say every time the BJP top leadership, including Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, would caution the voters: “Batenge, toh katenge (Divided, we fall)”.

On November 23, when the Assembly election results started trickling in, it became crystal clear: Hemant had, single-handedly, inflicted a crushing and decisive defeat to the BJP-led alliance which had all the star campaigners from Modi, Shah, Yogi to State-level stalwarts like Marandi and Munda. Soren helped his alliance score a landslide by romping home at 56 out of 81 constituencies.

Against all odds

The 1975-born young tribal leader, who is the third child (among four children) of JMM patriarch Shibu Soren and his wife Roopi Soren, was fighting against all odds. First, as the sitting Chief Minister of Jharkhand, he was put behind bars by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in an alleged land scam case on January 31 this year. Second, his confidant Champai Soren, whom he coronated with the CM’s chair before being incarcerated, turned rebel when Hemant was set free by the Jharkhand High Court in June and joined the BJP. Third, his sister-in-law Sita Soren, the three-term JMM MLA, changed colours and joined the BJP for greener pastures. Fourth, he was fighting against the mighty BJP-led alliance in the State which has never repeated an incumbent Government since it was formed in November 2000.

Against this backdrop, Hemant stitched a formidable alliance with the Congress, the RJD and the CPI-ML, and backed by his legislator-wife Kalpana Soren (who has done her B Tech as well as MBA), campaigned in all the five sub-divisions in Jharkhand, crisscrossing from one naxal-infested zone to the tribal-dominated areas, playing the victim card (his arrest and subsequent release) to the hilt.

Quit B Tech course

Hemant, who was not a born politician, learnt the political ropes very fast. In fact, those who know him and his family aver that after passing his Class XIIth from Patna High School in Bihar’s Capital, Hemant’s father Guru Ji, (as Shibu Soren, the former Jharkhand CM is fondly known) got him enrolled for B Tech in Mechanical Engineering at the prestigious Birla Institute of Technology (BIT, Mesra) in Ranchi.

However, the untimely death of Shibu Soren’s eldest son Durga Soren, who was then a JMM MLA from Jama (near Dumka), due to brain haemorrhage in 2009, made Hemant discontinue his studies and plunged into the hurly-burly of politics.

He became a Rajya Sabha member in 2009 only to resign from the Upper House in January 2010 as in December 2009 he won his first Assembly election from Dumka. In 2010, he became the Deputy CM of Jharkhand in the BJP-led Arjun Munda Government till the latter collapsed under its weight in January 2013. After a brief spell of President’s rule, he became the Chief Minister for the first time in 2013 with the support of Congress and the RJD.

Though he was upstaged by BJP’s Raghubar Das in 2014, he made a remarkable comeback in December 2019 and donned the mantle again. Hemant continued his winning spree in November 2024, proving all the political pundits wrong.

Maharashtra Assembly poll 2024 results | Check constituency results here

Jharkhand Assembly poll 2024 results | Check constituency results here

Bypoll 2024 results | Check Karnataka results here

Assembly Elections 2024 | The Maharashtra Assembly polls took place against the backdrop of a fractured political landscape in the western state where the Shiv Sena and NCP went up against the Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar factions, even as the BJP and Congress tried to make their mark. Maha Yuti are currently comfortably poised to win. Meanwhile, in Jharkhand, the JMM faced a challenge after Hemant Soren's arrest and Champai, a longstanding party member, joining the BJP, but look set to retain power with its I.N.D.I.A. allies. Check live updates and track the latest coverage, live news, in-depth opinions, and analyses only on Deccan Herald.

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