Hemant Soren

The Raghubar Das ministry was seeking amendments to the Chhotanagpur Tenancy Act, 1908, and the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act, 1949. These two original laws had safeguarded the rights of the tribal communities on their land.

According to the existing laws the land transactions could only be done between the tribals.

The new amendments gave the tribals the right to allow the government to make commercial use of the tribal land and to take the tribal land on lease.

The proposed bill amending the existing law had been approved by the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly.

Hemant Soren (born 10 August 1975) is an Indian politician from Jharkhand, who served as the 5th Chief Minister of Jharkhand from 2019 to 2024 and from 2013 to 2014.

He is also the working president of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, a political party in Jharkhand.

He was a member of Rajya Sabha from 24 June 2009 to 4 January 2010.

He started his political career as Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) on 23 December 2009.

He was also the Deputy Chief Minister of Jharkhand from 2010 to 2013, leader of the opposition, Jharkhand Legislative Assembly from 2014 to 2019 and member of Rajya Sabha from Jharkhand from 2009 to 2010.

Notably, Hemant Soren faced an arrest by the Enforcement Directorate on January 31, 2024 in a land scam case.

He contends that this is a vindication by the central government.

Soren was born in Nemara in Ramgarh district, Bihar (now in Jharkhand) to Roopi and Shibu Soren, former Chief Minister of Jharkhand and founder-president of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha.

Hemant has two brothers and a sister.

He is the third child of his parents.

Among his siblings, the eldest was Durga Soren, the second eldest is his sister Anjali Soren, then himself.

He is followed by his youngest brother Basant Soren, who is also a MLA from Dumka constituency in Jharkhand.

His educational qualification is Intermediate from Patna High School, Patna, Bihar.

As per affidavit filed before Election Commission, Hemant enrolled in BIT Mesra, Ranchi in Mechanical Engineering, but dropped out.

Later on, he became Jharkhand deputy CM on 11 September 2010 till 8 January 2013.

He was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Jharkhand on 15 July 2013 with support from Congress and RJD after President's rule was removed from the state.

He represents Barhait constituency in the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly since 2014 and from Dumka from 2019 to 2020 and from 2009 to 2014.

In 2016, the BJP government in Jharkhand tried amending the Chhota Nagpur Tenancy Act and the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act which would allow owners and tenants of Adivasi land to use it for non-agricultural purposes and the other would allow transfer of Adivasi land for building roads, canals, educational institutions, hospitals, and other "government purposes".

This led to huge protests in the state and Hemant had strongly protested against these amendments.

The bills were sent to Droupadi Murmu (then Governor of Jharkhand) for approval in November 2016.

The tribal people had strongly objected to the proposed law.

During the Pathalgardi rebellion, protests were held against the proposed amendments to the tenancy acts.

In one incident the protests turned violent and the tribals abducted the security detail of BJP MP Karia Munda.

Police responded with a violent crackdown on the tribals, that caused the death of a tribal man.

Criminal cases were filed against more than 200 people including the tribal rights activist Father Stan Swamy.

Murmu, was criticized for her soft stand on police aggression against tribals during the movement.

Being a tribal herself, Murmu was expected to speak up to the government in support of the tribals but it did not happen, and instead she appealed to the Pathalgarhi agitation leaders to repose faith in the constitution.

Governor Murmu had received total of 192 memorandums against the amendments in the bill.

Then opposition leader Hemant Soren had said that the BJP government wanted to acquire tribal land through the two amendment Bills for the benefit of corporates.

Opposition parties Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, the Congress, the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha and others had put intense pressure against the bill.

CM Raghubar Das had invited Hemant to the Global Investors Summit in 2017, but Hemant called the summit a "maha chintan shivir of land grabbers" and claimed that it is being organised to loot the land of Adivasis, Moolvasis and the farmers of the state.

On 24 May 2017, Murmu relented and refused to give assent to the bills and returned the bill to the state government along with the memorandums she had received.

The bill was later withdrawn in August 2017.

In October 2017, Soren had demanded a CBI inquiry into the death of 11-year-old girl Santoshi Kumari who allegedly died of starvation in Simdega as the family was not given ration since July for not having Aadhaar number seeded to their bank account.

Soren also demanded action against Chief Secretary Rajbala Verma, who, he said, had passed an order through video conferencing to remove the names of the families having not linked their Ration Cards with their Aadhaar number.

He was again elected as the Chief Minister of Jharkhand in December 2019, and sworn in on 29 December.