How Kalpana Soren filled a political void in Jharkhand – with ease
Since Hemant Soren’s arrest, she has steered the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha through the crucial Lok Sabha elections with a steady hand and galvanising speeches.
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On the morning of May 16, all eyes inside the Utsav Upvan wedding resort in Jharkhand’s Giridih town were set on a bespectacled, sari-clad woman as she went from its halls to the garden area greeting those who had gathered to meet her. “Johar!” she said, with a stately but smiling demeanour, using the traditional greeting in Jharkhand.
Until two months ago, Kalpana Murmu Soren was a homemaker and the owner of a school in Ranchi. Today, she is the star campaigner of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. She is also contesting the bye-election from the Gandey assembly seat that fell vacant after the party’s legislator Sarfaraz Ahmad resigned from the seat and was elected to the Rajya Sabha.
Kalpana Soren, 48, was compelled to enter the political limelight after her husband and president of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Hemant Soren, was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on January 31 in connection with a money laundering case.
Resigning as chief minister hours before his arrest, Hemant Soren alleged that the central agency had been set upon him by the Bharatiya Janata Party as part of a “well-orchestrated conspiracy” to damage his party’s prospects in the Lok Sabha elections.
On March 4, making her political debut on the...
