RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, April 29: JMM today made it clear that Chief Minister Hemant Soren did nothing wrong by taking a mining lease in his name and his act does not come under the purview of section 9A of the Representation of the People Act 1951 as being said by BJP.
Those who made the things clear included JMM general secretary Supriyo Bhattacharya and JMM legislator Sudivya Kumar Sonu. They had organised a press conference at the party office in Bariatu for clarification.
During the press conference, they cited several Supreme Court and high court judgements delivered between 1964-and 2006.
The BJP had alleged Soren’s press advisor took a mining lease and his wife took land to carry out business. On this, Sonu said there is nothing wrong in doing so if the business is legal and is being run legally.
Sonu presented the example of Sudesh Mahto, Manish Jaiswal, Nitin Gadkari and several other leaders who despite being legislators and parliamentarians are indulged in business.
Asked why they are giving clarification organising press conferences when the matter does not come under said Act and ECI has not taken any decision in the matter, Sonu said it was required observing the way Election Commission of India (ECI) has been taking decisions coming under the influence of central leadership.
Asked what the party will do in case ECI takes action under the said section, Sonu said the door of the court is open in case interpretation of the law is required.
When asked about morality and ethics, Sonu said it was due to CM surrendering his mining lease and has always been informing about the mining lease to ECI at the time of filing nominations.
Sonu said CM did not sign the documents as it was done at the DC level as an area of lease of hardly 80 decimal.
The leaders also attacked former chief minister Das and Babulal Marandi.
Sonu said people in the state know well how Das did corruption in ‘Momentum Jharkhand.’ As far as Marandi is concerned, Sonu said, he does not have the right to talk about morality as he is the same person who left BJP in 2004 to float his party JVM and in the 2019 election, he defeated BJP as a JVM candidate and then joined BJP.
