Hemant Soren's brother, 7 others join Jharkhand govt

Basant Soren, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) supremo Shibu Soren's youngest son, on Friday took oath as minister in the Champai Soren-led government in Jharkhand, along with seven others.

Basant is also the younger brother of former Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren, who is in judicial custody in a money laundering case linked to an alleged land scam.

The new faces in the 12-member cabinet are JMM's Chaibasa MLA Deepak Birua and Basant Soren.

Basant Soren was elected as an MLA from Dumka assembly constituency, after he defeated Bharatiya Janata Party's Louis Marandi with a margin of 6,842 votes in a by-poll held in November 2020.

Birua won the Chaibasa seat by defeating BJP's J B Tubid by more than 26,000 votes in the 2019 assembly polls.

Those who retained their ministerial berths include Rameshwar Oraon, Banna Gupta and Badal Patralekh of the Congress in addition to JMM's Mithilesh Kumar Thakur, Hafizul Hasan and Bebi Devi.

Governor C P Radhakrishnan administered the oath of office and secrecy to the ministers.

The oath-taking ceremony was held at the Birsa Mandap of Raj Bhavan in presence of senior leaders of the JMM-led alliance and other government officials.

"The portfolios will be distributed today. We will take forward the work of Jharkhand's development after assigning responsibilities to every minister," the CM said.

Earlier on February 2, 67-year-old Champai Soren was sworn in as the 12th chief minister of the state, while senior Congress leader Alamgir Alam and Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Satyanand Bhokta took oath as ministers.

JMM executive president Hemant Soren was arrested by the ED on January 31, shortly after he resigned as the chief minister.

The JMM-led alliance in the state has 47 MLAs -- JMM-29, Congress-17 and one of the RJD -- in the 81-member assembly.

The BJP has 26 legislators and the All Jharkhand Students' Union Party has three.

The Nationalist Congress Party and the Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist have one lawmaker each, apart from two Independents.

There is also a nominated member.