Jharkhand's new Mahagathbandhan government under Chief Minister Champai Soren will face the floor test on February 5 when the assembly convenes for a two-day session, said Congress leader Ghulam Ahmad Mir on Saturday.
The MLAs will camp at a 'protected place' until the floor test, the Congress Jharkhand in-charge told ANI. The lawmakers in the grand alliance were moved to a private resort in Hyderabad.
The decision to move the leaders to the capital of Congress-ruled Telangana, is to prevent poaching attempts by the BJP-led opposition in Jharkhand.
"It's unthinkable and unprecedented for a sitting chief minister to step down and hand the reins to a party colleague. The entire coalition unanimously picked Hemant Soren's successor and formally proposed his name as the next cheif minister to the governor. We are thankful to the governor for allowing the oath-taking ceremony to take place yesterday. The alliance will be invited for a floor test in the assembly on February 5. Till then, all our MLAs will remain in a protected place," the Congress leader told the agency.
He was speaking on the sidelines of the Congress's Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra which is in its Jharkhand leg.
Tribal leader Champai Soren, 67, has earned the sobriquet "Jharkhand's Tiger" for his contribution to the long fight for the creation of a separate state in the 1990s. He started his political career by getting elected as an independent MLA through a by-election from the Saraikela seat in undivided Bihar in 1991.
Four years later, he contested the assembly polls from the seat on JMM ticket and defeated the BJP's Panchu Tudu. In the first assembly elections held in the state in 2000 after its formation, he was defeated from the same constituency by BJP's Anant Ram Tudu.
He regained the seat in 2005 by defeating the BJP candidate by a margin of only 880 votes. He won the subsequent elections in 2009, 2014 and 2019.
He served as a cabinet minister in the BJP government headed by Arjun Munda between from 2010 to 2013. When Hemant Soren formed his second government in the state in 2019, Champai Soren became the minister of food and civil supplies and transport.
