Former Jharkhand Chief Minister Babulal Marandi has finally merged his Jharkhand Vikas Morcha with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at an event named ‘Milan Samaroh’ in Ranchi on Monday. Marandi also joined BJP in the presence of Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP chief JP Nadda. It is to be noted that the move from Babulal Marandi comes at least 14 years after he snapped relations with the saffron party.
During the ‘Milan Samaroh’, Home Minister Amit Shah hugged Babulal Marandi and welcomed him to the BJP fold.
Earlier, Babulal Marandi invited the people of Jharkhand to witness his "wapsi" (return) to BJP through a tweet.
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The merger of JVM and BJP was announced on Tuesday last week. "A formal merger ceremony will take place on February 17 at Jagannathpur maidan, which is also known as Prabhat Tara maidan, in the presence of BJPs former president and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, present BJP president J P Nadda and BJP vice-president Om Prakash Mathur," Marandi has told reporters.
“Office-bearers of the party, district presidents and members of the executive committee were present in the JVM(P) meeting when the merger proposal was unanimously passed and approved,” he had said.
JVM-P has three MLAs, but two of them -Bandhu Tirkey and Pradip Yadav - have rebelled and the meeting during the day decided to expel them from the party. Marandi will be the lone legislator of the party after doors were shown to the two others.
It is worth mentioning here that BJP has 25 MLAs presently in the 81-member Jharkhand Assembly. The saffron party lost power to opposition alliance of JMM- Congress-RJD in the state polls in the end of last year.
Babulal Marandi’s Journey
Beginning his career as a teacher before joining the BJP and going on to become a junior minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, Marandi was chosen by the BJP to become the first chief minister of the newly created Jharkhand on November 15, 2000. Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar in that year.
The allies of the BJP-led NDA, however, breathed down his neck on one ground or the other and culminated their dissent by crossing the floor in the assembly in March, 2003. The then speaker Inder Singh Namdhari approved a cut motion on budget by voice vote amidst a din, triggering the fall of his government.
Soon after, the BJP appointed Arjun Munda as the chief minister and all the dissenting ministers had again become ministers in the Munda Cabinet with Namdhari once again retaining the speakers post. The BJP went to the 2005 assembly polls under the leadership of Munda and the results had left a hung house with independent MLAs holding sway. After a nine-day UPA rule under the leadership of JMM president Shibu Soren, Munda formed the government.
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Marandi, who was a BJP MP, decided to walk away from the party and formed JVM-P along with some senior BJP leaders in September 2006. After forming the new party, Marandi won an assembly election for the first time in the November-December 2019 polls.
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