New Delhi, Jun 27 (PTI) Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Monday met Home Minister Amit Shah and Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarujun Kharge here amid suspense over whether his Jharkhand Mukti Morcha will support the Opposition or the NDA’s presidential nominee.
JMM executive president Soren first met Shah and then Kharge of the Congress party, with his office calling both the interactions courtesy calls.
In his meeting with Shah, the Jharkhand Chief Minister raised administrative issues of the state, including the dues owed to it by the Centre and the presidential polls, JMM sources said.
They said Shah urged Soren to extend JMM’s support to the NDA’s presidential pick Murmu, a tribal, to which the JMM executive president said the party will take a call on it at an appropriate time.
The JMM is yet to overcome its dilemma over supporting Murmu for the president’s post. Jharkhand being a predominantly tribal state, the ruling party would not like to be seen as going against a tribal leader for the top constitutional post, but at the same time is wary about the perception of any dilution in its stiff anti-BJP stance.
The JMM runs a coalition government in Jharkhand with the Congress and has adversarial relations with the BJP in the state.
In his meeting with Kharge, Soren congratulated him on the Congress candidate’s win in the Mandar assembly bypoll in Jharkhand on Sunday. The presidential election also came up for discussion, JMM sources said.
Soren is learnt to have told Kharge also that the party will soon take a call on whom to support in presidential polls.
The meetings come amid intense speculation over whether the JMM will back NDA presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu or the Opposition’s joint nominee Yashwant Sinha.
Murmu has been twice (2000 and 2009) elected from Rairangpur seat in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district on BJP ticket. In 2015, she was sworn in as the first woman governor of Jharkhand. For the presidential election, she filed her nomination papers on Friday, while Sinha submitted his papers on Monday.
There was no representative from the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), which had endorsed Sinha’s candidature but was said to be mulling backing Murmu, a tribal leader belonging to the Santhal community. Soren also belongs to the Santhal ethnic group which has a sizeable population in Jharkhand.
Murmu had earlier called up Soren to seek JMM’s support for the July 18 polls.
A meeting of the JMM MPs and legislators, chaired by party supremo and the chief minister’s father Shibu Soren, on the issue on Saturday had remained inconclusive. PTI ASK ASK SK
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