A day after the Jharkhand government initiated process for legal action to realise outstanding coal royalties from the Centre, chief minister Hemant Soren accused BJP state president of opposing the state’s interest.

Taking to X, Soren has criticised state BJP president Babulal Marandi’s objection to the state government’s attempt to realise the outstanding coal dues, by calling it “unfortunate”.

In a post on X, Hemant said: “The demands of Jharkhandis are not baseless. Your opposition to Jharkhandi rights is really unfortunate and sad. When you had to stand with us with the full strength of your organisation, (now) you are opposing. Anyway, we will definitely take our rights. Because this money is the right of every Jharkhandi.”

BJP Dhanwar MLA Babulal Marandi on Tuesday targeted the JMM and said on social media that JMM is making baseless and misleading allegations of ₹1.36 lakh crore dues from the central government. He had said that if the JMM has any concrete evidence regarding this figure, then they should put it before the public with documents and facts.

On Tuesday, Hemant Soren had appealed to the nine NDA MPs (eight BJP and one Ajsu) in his X handle to raise their voice in Parliament for state’s outstanding dues. “It is expected from the BJP MPs from the state to raise their voice to get the state’s legitimate dues which is very crucial for development of the state.”

Political commentators termed the move by Hemant Soren as carefully crafted to portray BJP and its MPs as “against” the interest of the state.

“The chief minister has been writing to the Prime Minister, coal minister and even shared it with NITI Aayog about outstanding coal royalties in the last few years. This is the first instance he has publicly appealed to the NDA MPs which has the largest number in Jharkhand (nine out of 14 Lok Sabha seat) as part of a move to portray their silence as against state’s interest by claiming that the huge amount would have been used for development and infrastructural growth of the backward state,” claimed political writer Ashok Verma.