Take care of tribes' aspirations: Gadkari's advice

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Nitin Gadkari has advised the newly-formed Arjun Munda government to be a ‘government that delivers’.

Even though most senior party leaders are sceptical about how long the alliance with the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) will last, Gadkari asked Chief Minister Arjun Munda to take care of the agonies and aspirations of the tribal communities of the state. Apart from Gadkari, who was firm that Munda should be the chief minister because he was from a tribal community, no other senior leader, including L K Advani, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, showed similar faith in the alliance.

According to party insiders, the high-handedness of the party president in pushing Munda’s candidature for the chief ministership did not go down well with Advani and, therefore, he chose to skip the swearing-in ceremony, sending a message that he had little faith in the state government. Although Gadkari was not present at the swearing-in ceremony in Ranchi today, he wrote a letter to Munda, asking him to form a strong, stable and effective government, which the people of the state deserved.

“BJP has always insisted on striving to give high quality governance in states, where it is ruling, and I am confident your government will offer a government that delivers to the people of Jharkhand,” Gadkari wrote in the letter.“Ensuring that the fruits of development reach to the poor sections of the society and overcoming the threat of Naxalism are the twin challenges before the Jharkhand government,” Gadkari wrote.

Arjun Munda, along with Hemant Soren, the son of JMM supremo Shibu Soren, and Sudhesh Mahto, the chief of All Jharkhand Students’ Union (Ajsu) were sworn in at the ceremony.