Baby Kumari, a young girl who saw Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren during an interactive session at Tildag Panchayat of Garhwa district on Thursday, urged him to help, saying “I want to study, sir”.
Within 48 hours, she and her sisters were admitted to a school with financial assistance provided by government schemes.
Her parents were also covered by schemes so that they could earn a livelihood.
While conducting a review meeting at Daltonganj on Friday, Soren warned officials saying they would be taken to task if they failed to implement welfare schemes.
After the meeting, a large number of supporters who came in a procession that also had horses and camels escorted the chief minister to the local Shivaji ground where he addressed a rally.
If these are any indication, Soren has recently consolidated his position despite facing many odds.
Along with attending camps related to Sarkar Apke Dwar that are meant for covering beneficiaries at their doorsteps at various places of the state, Soren has also been addressing public gatherings as part of Khatiyani Johar Yatra where he has been informing people what his government did for protecting the interest of local people.
“We have accepted the 1932 khatiyan for deciding domicile and also raised reservation quota that previous governments didn’t do,” Soren told the audience, referring to the passing of two bills in the state Assembly on November 11 for adopting the khatiyan (land records) of 1932 for deciding domicile for appointment against vacancies for grade 3 and 4 government jobs and also raising total reservation quota in the state to 77 per cent, including 27 per cent for backward classes.
The state government had also decided last year to move the Centre for inclusion of the Adivasi Sarna code in the religion column of the census form.
They also took certain other pro-people decisions earlier such as universalisation of old-age pension and re-introduction of old pension scheme for government employees, besides announcing vacancies in government jobs, regularising service of about 65,000 para teachers and giving extension to service of assistant police personnel who were appointed for three years by the previous BJP government led by Raghubar Das.
The Soren government also introduced schemes for providing easy education loans to students and also free coaching so that they can appear at competitive examinations.
“By all these, Soren certainly outwitted BJP that is doing nothing more than criticising the state government by tweeting and issuing statements frequently,” said an observer.
