New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former Jharkhand chief minister Raghubar Das on Monday, April 25, accused chief minister Hemant Soren of using his official position to allot land to those close to him.Speaking at a press conference, Das accused Soren, who holds the industries portfolio in the state cabinet, of allotting land in an industrial area in the state capital, Ranchi, to his wife, Kalpana Soren, the Indian Express reported.Moreover, he also alleged that the chief minister had given out mining leases to his political representative, Pankaj Mishra and his press advisor, Abhishek Prasad.Das claims that Soren allotted 11 acres of land to a company, Sohrai Live Private Limited, which supposedly belongs to his wife, to set up a meat processing plant in Ranchi’s Behra Industrial Area, which is “meant exclusively for tribal entrepreneurs,” the New Indian Express quoted him as saying.Similarly, he claimed that Prasad had been given a mining lease for a 11.70 acre plot in the state’s Sahebganj district in the name of Shiv Shakti Enterprises in April last year. “According to the government papers, Rs 90 lakh investment has also been made in this mining area,” the Express reported quoted him as saying.Mishra, Das alleged, has been given a lease in the name of a company called Mahakal Stone in the same area in a “haphazard manner”.He accused Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) government of working only for vested interests in spite of its campaign slogan ‘Abua Dishum, Abua Raj’ (My Country, My Rule).JMM spokesperson Supriyo Bhattacharya said that the party will respond on Tuesday. Soren himself has not spoken on the claims yet. Also read: In Jharkhand, Death of 5 Labourers Is Testament to Coal Mafia’s Chokehold on PoorDas had earlier released documents claiming to show that Soren himself had obtained a mining lease in Ranchi, for which he had received a letter of intent (LoI) as well as environmental clearance.Subsequently, a public interest litigation (PIL) was filed in the Supreme Court seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the alleged nexus between the chief minister and the state mining department which led him to get the lease.The PIL accused Soren of violating constitutional principles by holding an office of profit while occupying an official position.According to news agency PTI, the Supreme Court had issued notice to Soren during a hearing on the matter in April. State advocate general Rajiv Ranjan, during the hearing, had claimed that a “mistake” had been made and that the lease will be surrendered.Das also took objection to the state government removing the ‘Religion’ column from certificates for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST). He claimed that the erstwhile BJP government had added the column to benefit those tribals who follow the ‘Sarna’ religion.Sarna is not as yet recognised as a distinct religion. In November, 2020, chief minister Soren had tabled a resolution for the provision of a ‘Sarna Code’ which had been passed in unanimously in the state assembly. The JMM had sought for the Sarna code to be included in the 2021 census (delayed due to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic), along with demands for a caste-based census.Das, however, accused the Soren government of removing the religion column in the caste certificates after coming “under pressure from missionaries”.
