Hemant Soren convened an urgent cabinet meeting with bureaucrats at Ranchi on Thursday evening, soon after being sworn in as the 14th chief minister of Jharkhand.
Hemant was the only one to take oath on Thursday as the ruling coalition allies are still negotiating over cabinet berths.
Speaking to reporters at the state secretariat at 6.50pm, the chief minister said: “We have decided to hold the first Assembly session between December 9-12 and Stephen Marandi (JMM MLA from Maheshpur) was named as the Pro-tem Speaker of this Assembly session.”
He also said that the cabinet has decided to send an all-party delegation and a team of bureaucratic officials to study the conditions of Jharkhand tribals working in Assam tea gardens.
“The team would study their conditions and the facilities provided to them at their workplace and then submit their report to the government at the earliest,” said Soren.
In the run-up to the state Assembly polls, Hemant in September had written to his Assam counterpart Himanta Biswa Sarma, who was the BJP Jharkhand election co-in-charge, seeking ST status for “tea tribes” underlining that the community, mostly from Jharkhand, were marginalized despite their significant contribution to the economy of the north eastern state.
Soren expressed his concern over the plight of the “tea tribes in Assam, who are currently categorised as Other Backward Classes (OBC).
Soren said: “The cabinet also decided to appoint Balram Mahato, the brother of the deceased jawan Arjun Mahato, a native of Bokaro in Jharkhand who died in a terrorist attack in border area of Assam, in the Bokaro collectorate. An ex-gratia amount of ₹10 lakh was given to the deceased’s family.”
He also said that an increased amount of ₹2500 will be paid to the beneficiaries of the Maiyan Samman Yojana (financial assistance scheme for women between 18-50 years of age) from December, as promised in the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha’s manifesto.
“The cabinet has decided to initiate legal proceedings to recover outstanding dues of ₹1.36 lakh crore from the central government incurred on coal PSUs,” said Soren.
The cabinet has also decided to publish the examination calendar for Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) and Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission (JSSC) before January 1 and the publication of pending results.
Youth aspirants had been vocal against the Hemant Soren government for delay in the release of JPSC and JSSC results in various posts.
The chief minister said that the cabinet expansion would be held “very soon, within a day or two”.
Earlier on Thursday evening, Hemant Soren was administered oath by Jharkhand governor Santosh Kumar Gangwar in the presence of senior INDIA bloc leaders including the leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, and Bengal chief minister and Trinamool leader
Mamata Banerjee.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal and Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav, Karnataka deputy chief minister D.K. Shivakumar and Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann were also present.
Prior to taking oath, Hemant Soren on Thursday morning shared a message on X asserting that unity was the biggest weapon of the people in the state and that they can “neither be divided nor silenced” ahead of his swearing-in as chief minister.
“Let there be no doubt about it — our unity is our biggest weapon. We can neither be divided nor silenced. Whenever they push us back, we move forward.”
Hemant Soren also seemingly took a dig at the BJP-led NDA alliance, which lost the Jharkhand assembly election, saying, “Whenever they try to silence us, our voice of rebellion, revolution grows louder because we are Jharkhandis and Jharkhandis do not bow down.”
The chief minister stated that today was a historic day, celebrating the collective struggle of the Jharkhandi people for justice and the “abua (self-governance)” government they voted for, carrying forward the movement of revolutionaries such as Birsa Munda and Amar Shaheed.
