JMM, Congress MLAs arrive at Shamshabad airport prior to Champai Soren-led govt’s floor test tomorrow

Congress MLAs and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha members arrived at Shamshabad airport from the resort in Hyderabad on Monday, ahead of the pivotal floor test of the Champai Soren-led coalition government in Jharkhand. Three days after Soren took the oath of office as Chief Minister, on February 5, the Soren government would seek a vote of confidence in the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly. In the 81-member Jharkhand Assembly, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha holds 29 seats, its ally Congress has 17, and the RJD and CPI (ML) have one seat each. The INDIA bloc has enough members to easily pass the floor test with the backing of forty-three MLAs.

Meanwhile, Congress leader Pranav Jha on Sunday alleged that BJP was still trying to break the party in Jharkhand.
“CM has been allowed to vote. We have sufficient numbers quite in fact more than the majority. We came because the BJP was still trying to break us…The threat of ED, CBI, and IT was there. They’re trying to break every opposition state,” Pranav Jha told reporters in Hyderabad.
The floor test of the new government of Jharkhand will be held in the Assembly on Monday.

This move is perceived as an attempt by the ruling coalition to prevent the main Opposition player, the BJP, from poaching its flock and to keep it together. On February 5, the Assembly will meet for two days. Hemant Soren, the former chief minister, had earlier petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn his arrest; however, the court rejected his argument and instructed him to take his case to the relevant high court. The Directorate of Enforcement (ED) detained Soren on Wednesday night following six hours of interrogation in the money laundering case related to the purported land scam.

The probe pertains to huge amounts of proceeds of crime generated by forging official records by showing ‘fake sellers’ and purchasers in the guise of forged or bogus documents to acquire huge parcels of land having value in crores.