New Delhi: Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi has asked the party’s four ministers in the Jharkhand coalition government not to ignore the workers in the poll year and redress their grievances on priority. According to party insiders, Rahul had been receiving negative feedback from workers over the conduct of the four ministers and issued the warning during a review of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in the Tribal state on Wednesday. Jharkhand will have Assembly polls after the Lok Sabha elections in 2024.
Subsequently, AICC in-charge of Jharkhand Avinash Pande spoke to the four Congress ministers separately and told them clearly that they may be replaced if they do not mend their ways. Chief Minister Hemant Soren of JMM leads the coalition government in which Congress and the RJD are partners in Jharkhand. Four Congress MLAs have been inducted into the Cabinet--Rameshwar Oraon as Finance Minister, Alamgir Alam as the Rural Development Minister, Banna Gupta as Health Minister and Badal Patralekh as the Agriculture Minister--Alam is also the CLP leader.
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In the 81-member Jharkhand Assembly, the ruling coalition has 47 MLAs, with JMM-30, Congress-18 and RJD-1 respectively. The Congress managers had smelled a rat in the Jharkhand unit last year when around 9/18 MLAs voted in favour of the NDA Presidential nominee Droupadi Murmu on July 18 though they had been asked by the party to vote for the joint opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha.
Later, several of the lawmakers skipped protests against the ED summons for Sonia Gandhi, provoking AICC in-charge Avinash Pande to order a probe into the lapses. Furthermore, the arrest of three MLAs Irfan Ansari from Jamtara, Rajesh Kachhap from Khijri and Naman Bixal Kongari from Kolebira with huge cash by the West Bengal police forced the party managers to review the entire state unit. Later, a party investigation revealed that the detained lawmakers had been in touch with five other colleagues for some time.
The Congress had then accused the BJP of playing dirty tricks in the matter and had urged the Assembly Speaker to disqualify the three lawmakers. The probe had forced the AICC to also review the performance of the four ministers, who had been facing charges of not pursuing the Congress’ interests aggressively in the state.
The suspension of the three lawmakers was revoked by the party last month. Recently, a former union minister belonging to the state complained to the AICC about the conduct of the four-party ministers saying they were contributing to anti-incumbency ahead of the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in 2024.
“We will soon start a programme in all the districts to ensure that the expectations of party workers from our ministers and state government are fulfilled. This will be done as a special public hearing exercise to allow the workers to avail themselves of the benefits of government schemes and help them economically. This will lead to a stronger organisation. We will also publicise the schemes of the government,” AICC in-charge Jharkhand Avinash Pande told ETV Bharat. According to Pande, the party would strengthen the party in all 14 Lok Sabha seats in the state and work with the alliance partners to defeat the BJP next year.
