The Congress has given up its claim on the Rajya Sabha seat in Jharkhand that has fallen vacant due to the end of tenure of the party’s Dheeraj Sahu. The JMM boss and former chief minister, Hemant Soren, who is in jail on corruption charges, forced the Congress to leave the seat for his party’s Sarfaraj Ahmad. Soren had recently got Sarfaraz to resign as an MLA from Gandey assembly constituency from where he plans to field his wife Kalpana Soren. In return, Sarfaraz was promised a Rajya Sabha nomination. When the vacancy arose, the Congress demanded the seat as it belongs to the party’s quota. Soren told the Congress leadership that he has already promised the seat to Sarfaraz as part of a plan to save the coalition government in the state after his resignation. Sources said that the Congress leadership decided not to press the matter after it received reports that a large number of its MLAs in Jharkhand are not happy and some are even in touch with the BJP. The party did not want a repeat of the Himachal Pradesh episode in Jharkhand. This is not the first time that the two Jharkhand allies have clashed over a Rajya Sabha seat. The fight when a vacancy arose last time was so fierce that the then AICC general secretary in charge of Jharkhand, Avinash Pande, directed the party’s MLAs to boycott the chief minister for two months to build pressure on him to leave the seat for the party. Soren, however, stood his ground and took the seat. With the desertion of the party’s MLAs threatening the survival of its government in Himachal, the Congress leadership has decided to yield ground to the JMM and not rock the boat in another state.
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