J'khand issue hurt Cong: Minister

A top minister at Centre admitted that Shibu Soren was not ready to quit as chief minister until the last minute.

A top minister in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government on Saturday admitted the Jharkhand developments were a setback for the Congress and insisted that Shibu Soren was not ready to quit as chief minister until the last minute.

HT Image

Soren, chief of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) that contributes five MPs to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), tried to cling to power until immense pressure from Manmohan Singh as well as the Congress leadership.

"It was propriety for Soren to resign after what happened but he was not prepared to," the minister told IANS.

"Everybody here, including the prime minister and (Congress president) Sonia Gandhi, is very unhappy about the whole thing.

"It was an accident. The leadership here was wrongly advised by the people on the spot."

Finally, it was a tough call for both the Congress and Soren, after what the minister describes as days of "dilly-dallying".

After the cabinet panel on political affairs chaired by Manmohan Singh asked Jharkhand Governor Syed Sibtey Razi - who himself is described as a villain of the piece - to explore the possibility of forming an "alternative government", Soren submitted his resignation.

The new government led by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former chief minister Arjun Munda has to prove its majority March 21.

According to the Congress minister, it was a "wrong perception" that the Congress leadership was involved in the Jharkhand crisis.

"Sonia Gandhi never interferes. Her instructions were -- do what is proper. What could she do if people told the governor they had the numbers to prove their strength? If you don't believe them, then that also causes trouble."

Razi is being blamed for not doing the right thing when the situation was getting out of hand. "This should have been done by the governor without any intervention from New Delhi."

It was a dramatic denouement to a day of complex political manoeuvring by Soren's United Progressive Alliance (UPA) as well as the rival National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that saw the Jharkhand assembly adjourning six times, preventing a trial of strength directed by the Supreme Court.

The NDA accused the UPA of stalling on purpose a test of strength, since Soren never had the numbers to take power. The NDA claims the majority support of 41 legislators in the 81-member Jharkhand assembly.

For the Congress, the entire episode beginning from Governor Razi's hasty swearing-in of Soren March 2 despite his doubtful majority has been a setback to the goodwill it had earned since its victory in parliamentary polls and Sonia Gandhi's subsequent renunciation of the prime minister's post.

"Things could have been done more gracefully," admitted the Congress minister, who is known to be close to Manmohan Singh.

"It was a close call in the fractured Assembly, and the Governor made an error based on the claim of independents who first said they would support Soren.

"We have come out looking badly, but we believe it is over now. We will get past it."