Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren wins trust vote, opposition BJP walks out

There were 48 votes in favour of the confidence motion moved by Hemant Soren. As Soren won the vote for trust, the opposition BJP staged a walkout from the Jharkhand legislature.

Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren won the confidence motion he moved in the special one-day Jharkhand assembly session on Monday. The session comes amid an ongoing political crisis in the state, and a day after UPA MLAs from Jharkhand staying in Raipur resort flew back to Ranchi on Sunday. As Soren won the vote for trust, the opposition BJP staged a walkout from the Jharkhand legislature.

There were 48 votes in favour of the confidence motion moved by Soren, and there were zero votes in the opposition side. Fearing poaching of its MLAs by the opposition BJP to topple the government, Chief Minister Hemant Soren's Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM)-led alliance had shifted the legislators to a luxurious resort in Nava Raipur. 

Addressing the special session of the Assembly and taking a dig at the Opposition BJP, Soren said, "They want to create an atmosphere where two states are pitted against each other. They want to create an atmosphere of civil war and want to fan riots to win polls. As long as there is UPA government here, such plots will not survive. You will get a befitting political reply."

MLAs of the governing alliance took a special aircraft back to Ranchi, the state's capital, on Sunday from Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh, where they had been isolated at a five-star resort to thwart suspected poaching efforts.

According to Soren and his party JMM, the BJP is attempting to use the situation in order to persuade members of the ruling coalition to defect and overthrow the elected government, a strategy that has been adopted in states like Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Karnataka.

The ruling coalition has 49 MLAs in the 81-member assembly in which the majority mark is 41. The JMM, the largest party, has 30 MLAs, the Congress 18, and Tejashwi Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) has one. The BJP, which is the main opposition, has 26 MLAs.