Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren heading a JMM-Congress-RJD alliance government has accused the Enforcement Directorate (ED) of targeting him for over a year as he is not aligned with the political party in power at the Centre.

A two-page letter was sent through a special messenger to the office of the federal agency on Tuesday. The letter was shared on Wednesday evening by a national news portal and addressed to the assistant director, ED Ranchi, Deovrat Jha.

The letter states: “The repeated summoning of the undersigned is a roving enquiry being conducted by you to besmirch the reputation of the undersigned who is a public servant and head of the Government in Jharkhand.”

“You have been targeting the undersigned for over a year now only because the undersigned is not aligned with the political party which is in power at the Centre. Issuance of repeated summons to the undersigned is actuated by malice and part of the political conspiracy to destabilize the democratically elected Government of Jharkhand,” the letter written in English states.

The letter also claims that the immovable assets owned and possessed by the chief minister are licit and have been acquired with funds declared in the returns filed with the income-tax department from time to time.

It further claims that complete particulars of all movable and immovable properties owned by him and his family members along with certified copies of the title deeds were submitted on November 30 last year. It also states that details of the bank accounts and PAN have also been furnished and there is nothing further to add.

On Sunday, the ED had issued its sixth summons to Soren for questioning him in an alleged money-laundering case linked to a land scam in Ranchi. He had been asked to depose at the ED regional office in Ranchi on Tuesday around 11am.

However, Soren skipped the summon and went on Tuesday to address a meeting in Dumka.

Significantly, Soren has not deposed to any of the ED summons issued this year and had filed a petition before the Supreme Court and later at Jharkhand High Court seeking protection from the ED action and terming the summons as “unwarranted”. Both the courts had dismissed his petition.

Soren had last attended the ED summons in November 2022 and was grilled by the agency for over nine hours in an alleged money-laundering case linked to illegal mining.

Speaking to the media before leaving for ED summons in November 2022, Soren had also shared a letter written to ED assistant director and urged the federal agency to refrain from making sensational statements on illegal mining.

Soren has repeatedly been stating before the media and also during public meetings that the ED probe was part of a conspiracy of the Opposition to destabilise his government and that the Centre has been trying to make the government unstable ever since they came to power.