Soren smells power, again

With no party winning a majority in the 81-member Jharkhand assembly, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), with its 18-odd seats, is in a position to decide who forms the government in the state.

With no party winning a majority in the 81-member Jharkhand assembly, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), with its 18-odd seats, is in a position to decide who forms the government in the state.

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And JMM head Shibu Soren is poised to play kingmaker.

Early this year JMM chief Shibu Soren was forced to give up office as chief minister after having lost an assembly byelection.

He did so once earlier in 2005, when he and the Congress together could not rustle up a majority in the assembly, paving the way for Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Arjun Munda to return as chief minister.

Also, he was in out of the government in the 2004-09 term of the United Progressive Alliance at the Centre.

In 2004, he became coal minister in the Manmohan Singh government. But he was forced to quit the cabinet in July that year after a Jharkhand court issued a warrant against him, implicating him in the Chirudih massacre of 1975.

However, he came back with the same portfolio in October but he quit the cabinet in March 2005 after becoming chief minister of Jharkhand. He failed to prove his majority in the assembly and had to step down.

After becoming coal minister again in 2006, Soren had to leave for the third time after he was convicted and awarded life imprisonment for his alleged involvement in murdering his personal secretary Shashinath Jha in 1994.

The Delhi High Court acquitted him in 2007. He has also been let off in the Chirudih massacre case.