Jharkhand governor will clear air on CM Soren’s status in 4 days: JMM

RANCHI: The JMM-led coalition in Jharkhand Thursday claimed to have extracted an assurance from governor Ramesh Bais that he would send to the Election Commission within four days his opinion on its recommendation in the office-of-profit case against CM Hemant Soren.
Raj Bhavan officially confirmed the governor’s interaction with a delegation of MPs and office-bearers of the coalition without giving a timeline to end the status quo surrounding Soren’s House membership.
“The governor assured them of appropriate action in the matter shortly,” it said. The suspense over the CM’s continuance as an MLA and the government’s possible response to it has been building since word spread last week about the EC recommending his disqualification for allegedly holding a mining lease while in office.
The governor’s interaction with a team of four MPs and some office-bearers of the JMM-Congress-RJD alliance coincided with a cabinet meeting chaired by Soren giving its nod to a proposal to charter a plane for a month to ferry “VIPs and VVIPs”.
Four Congress ministers had been flown back to Ranchi from Chhattisgarh just the previous day, barely 24 hours after Soren saw them off at the city airport along with 29 other legislators still corralled in a Naya Raipur resort. JVM-P legislator Pradeep Yadav and Congress's Ramchandra Singh were put on a plane to Raipur on Wednesday to join their colleagues there.
“The cabinet gave its approval to charter a plane for the movement of VIPs and VVIPs on a nomination basis with effect from August 31 at a net cost of Rs 2 crore,” cabinet secretary Vandana Dadel said.
The cabinet also cleared a proposal to convene a special assembly session on September 5 amid reports that the plan was to seek a pre-emptive trust vote in the face of alleged attempts by BJP to poach MLAs of the coalition.
The 25 proposals that got the cabinet’s nod include distribution of rice through 2,500 PDS shops across 24 districts, extension of the contractual service of assistant police personnel from five to six years and an increase in medical cover under the Mukhyamantri Gambhir Bimari Upchar Yojana from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh.
JMM's Rajya Sabha MP Mahua Maji, who was in the delegation that visited Raj Bhavan, said governor Bais told them he was seeking legal opinion on the observations made by the EC in the office-of-profit case against Soren. “The governor acknowledged receiving a letter from the EC on this particular matter. He said he wouldn't take much time and forward his opinion within three-four days.”
Maji said Bais denied having met representatives of any political party between returning from Delhi and interacting with the Mahagathbandhan’s delegation on Thursday. “He also contested reports about passing any information to anyone when we wanted to know the origins of the tweets and statements from BJP lawmakers and the media.”
Lok Sabha MP Vijay Kumar Hansdak of JMM said Raj Bhavan's "continued silence on the issue has been hurting governance and creating confusion" in the state. "So, we wanted to know what was going on."