Son-rise: Hemant Soren grows taller as tribal leader, makes father proud

New Delhi: Hemant Soren, son of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) patriarch Shibu Soren popularly known as ‘Guru ji’, overcame odds and endured 149 days of incarceration to have the final laugh in the Jharkhand Assembly elections, boosting his image as a tall tribal leader and proving himself as the deserving heir to his father’s political legacy.

The victory may appear unexpected to many but Hemant Soren, 49, was confident of his return to power after the elections which, in his own words, were the “toughest ever” he has ever fought.

As the tribal leader gets ready to take oath as the Chief Minister for the fourth time, analysts agree that with the decisive victory in the current Assembly elections, Hemant Soren’s stature on the national stage is bound to grow bigger. His earlier stints as CM were from July 2013 to December 2014, from December 2019 to February 2024 and from July 2024 till now.

The rising national-level tribal star repulsed a BJP offensive which, to many, appeared to be potent with its anti-infiltrator pitch and save “Roti, Beti, Maati” slogan. He also managed to win the backing of Muslims, and OBCs and divert voters’ attention from anti-incumbency and issues like joblessness.

Hemant Soren, who along with his wife held 200 political rallies for the Assembly elections, showed self-belief and trusted his master stroke of financial assistance scheme for women, Maiyya Samman Yojna, for proving pollsters wrong.

Besides shouldering the load of the INDIA bloc campaign, Hemant Soren appears to have managed to improve the JMM’s tally over the last election. The 81-member Assembly is likely to see the JMM end up with over 30 legislators, out of the 55 INDIA bloc legislators – the most decisive mandate ever in the state.

Apart from carrying forward the legacy of his father and senior party leader Shibu Soren who, at one point of time, was known to carry the trump card to save or pull down governments in New Delhi, Hemant Soren also seems to have in his blood the art of turning jail stints into tsunami of electoral sympathy.

If it were criminal allegations that sent Soren senior to prison, it was the money laundering allegation that forced Hemant Soren to spend six months in jail – he was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on January 31, 2024, before getting bail on June 28. But, the common factor between the father-son duo has been their ability to bounce back from prison cells to capture voters’ imagination, riding high on waves of tribal pride or adivasi asmita.

After getting bail, Hemant Soren even posted a picture of a "prisoner’s stamp" on his arm on his 49th birthday on August 10 – a filmy reminder of what Amitabh Bachchan immortalised in “Deewar”.

The only similarity between the Assembly election results in Jharkhand and Maharashtra remains the electoral magic of financial assistance schemes for women. Both the JMM and the Mahayuti seem to have got rich dividends for their women-friendly money transfer schemes launched just before the elections.

Among the dissimilarities between the two state elections have been the results yielded by the Hindutva pitch of the BJP. Jharkhand voters did not desert their fight to save their tribal identity despite the best efforts by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, whereas in Maharashtra Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Ek Rahenge, Toh Safe Rahenge” struck a chord with voters.

In Jharkhand, the JMM’s strategy of not countering the NDA on its allegations of infiltration and sticking to the agenda of defending tribal pride worked wonders. Tribals, who form a third of the state’s population, continued their pattern of rejecting the NDA, as they did on the five ST-reserved seats in the Lok Sabha elections.

Hemant Soren single-handedly managed to demolish the BJP’s army of tribal leaders like Babulal Marandi, Arjun Munda, and Champai Soren. The party’s attempts to present its pro-tribal face by making a tribal as a Chief Minister in Chhattisgarh and Odisha also failed to convince Jharkhand voters.

Whether it was his jail term that proved to be a turning point or his “outsider versus insider” slogan, Heman Soren has little time to dissect the just-concluded electoral battle as he looks forward to better his father’s record by taking oath as CM for the fourth time. He, however, credits his father, who took oath as CM thrice, for mobilising the tribal voters even without physically joining the campaigning.

The road ahead for Hemant Soren is not going to be easy as he would need to coordinate with the Central government to rid the mineral-rich state of illegal mining and boost industrial development in the land-locked state.