New Delhi:

For Hemant Soren, the beginning and end of 2024 could not have been more different. 

Less than a month into the year, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader was taken into custody by the Enforcement Directorate in a land scam case and he had made sure he resigned as the Jharkhand chief minister before he was arrested. Now, with a month left in the year, Mr Soren has emerged as the architect of a thumping victory, ensuring that the INDIA alliance remains in power in the state and he gets a second straight term as chief minister. 

The JMM leader also suffered multiple other setbacks in between.

After Mr Soren’s arrest on January 31, his sister-in-law, Sita Soren – the wife of his late brother Durga Soren – joined the BJP in March. She was miffed over alleged moves to make Mr Soren’s wife, Kalpana, the chief minister in his absence and was expelled from the JMM for ‘anti-party’ activities in May.

The former chief minister was then granted bail by the Jharkhand High Court in June, five months after his arrest. The court held that, prima facie, he was not guilty and was not likely to commit a similar offence, noting that both conditions for bail under the stringent Prevention of Money Laundering Act had been met. 

Champai Soren – a close aide of JMM chief Shibu Soren and widely seen as the number three in the party – was appointed the chief minister in Hemant Soren’s absence. Trouble began brewing, however, when the party asked him to resign in July after Mr Soren’s release.

“When the leadership had changed, I was given responsibility. You know the sequence of events. After Hemant Soren came back, we (the coalition) picked him as our leader and I have resigned. I am following the decision taken by the coalition,” an upset Champai Soren had said after resigning in July. 

He joined the BJP a month later, claiming that he had been “humiliated and insulted” and wanted to deliver justice to the people. The BJP also accused the JMM-Congress alliance of allowing “infiltration” in the state, an issue that appeared to be gaining traction among voters. 

Despite all this, and some seat-sharing trouble with allies like the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Mr Soren ensured that his party bettered its tally to a projected 33 this year in the 81-member Assembly, up from 30 in 2019. Good performances from the Congress, RJD and CPI (ML) have taken the ruling coalition’s number to 55, with the BJP-led alliance ahead in only 25 seats. 

New Delhi:

With leads pointing to a rout for his party and the Maha Vikas Aghadi in Maharashtra, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Sanjay Raut claimed that there is something amiss (‘gadbad’) in the election and said that the projected results are not acceptable to the opposition coalition. He also called for elections to be held again, using ballot papers.

The BJP has hit back, saying that the Rajya Sabha MP suffers from mental bankruptcy.

As of 11.30 am, the ruling Mahayuti, consisting of the BJP, the Eknath Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led NCP, was ahead in 220 of Maharashtra’s 288 seats. The Mahayuti, which has the Congress, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) as its constituents, was projected to win just 56. Even the Shiv Sena (UBT) scion, Aaditya Thackeray, was trailing Milind Deora of the rival Sena faction by 600 votes. 

If the numbers hold, it will be an unprecedented victory for the Mahayuti, and Mr Raut said this was one of the reasons he felt that the numbers were suspect.

“There is definitely something amiss,” the Rajya Sabha MP said, but refused to elaborate on whether he was referring to electronic voting machines or something else. 

“A money machine was installed in every constituency. Eknath Shinde was saying that he would resign if any of his sitting MLAs lost. Does this happen in any election? What kind of confidence and what kind of a democracy is this? Does anyone get more than 200 seats? There has been dishonesty (‘beimani’) in the state. The results are such that you have implied that the voters of the state are dishonest; the voters of this state are not dishonest,” Mr Raut thundered. 

Asked whether his party would accept the results, he said, “No, and I think even the people will not accept the results. I am saying again and again that this cannot be the people’s verdict… How is it possible for Eknath Shinde’s faction to get 60 seats, for Ajit Pawar to get 40 seats and for the BJP to win 125 seats?”

In a post on X later, the Shiv Sena (UBT) leader repeated the charges and also called for elections to be held again, using ballot papers. 

As of 11.30 am, the Shiv Sena faction led by Eknath Shinde was leading in 54 seats – just two lower than the undivided party’s tally in 2019 – while the Shiv Sena (UBT) was ahead in 20. 

Hitting out at Mr Raut, BJP National Spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla said the opposition cries foul and begins raising questions about EVMs whenever the results are not in its favour.

“Sanjay Raut suffers from mental bankruptcy and no one takes him seriously in Maharashtra. The results in Wayanad (where Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is winning) are fine… the INDIA alliance feels that they will win in Jharkhand and the EVMs are fine there, EVMs were fine in Jammu and Kashmir. But there is something amiss in Haryana and  Maharashtra. Whenever they (opposition parties) lose an election or a case in court, they start abusing EVMs, the Election Commission and courts,” Mr Poonawalla sneered.