Won't quit politics, open to floating new outfit, says Champai Soren

Former Jharkhand chief minister Champai Soren said he would not quit politics, asserting that an option to float a new political outfit was always open to him.

Soren said he was firm on his plans after "facing humiliation at the hands of leaders of JMM", a party to which the veteran leader claimed that he devoted his entire life.

"It is a new chapter of my life. I won't quit politics as I have received lots of love and support from my followers. The chapter has closed, I may form a new outfit," the senior Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader said shortly after he reached his ancestral village Jhilingora in Seraikela-Kharsawan district post midnight on Tuesday.

The 67-year-old tribal leader has earned the nickname "Jharkhand's Tiger" for his contribution to the fight to create a separate state in the 1990s.

Jharkhand was carved out of the southern part of Bihar in 2000.

"No one from JMM contacted me. This is the land of Jharkhand...I have struggled since my student life. I participated in the agitation for a separate Jharkhand state under the leadership of party supremo Shibu Soren," Champai Soren said.

The JMM leader said he might join hands with any outfit if he gets a like-minded organisation.

"I posted what I felt was proper. The entire country is aware of what I thought," he said, referring to his post on X on August 18.

Amid speculations that he might join the BJP, the veteran politician had said he experienced "bitter humiliation" as chief minister, which compelled him to seek an alternative path.

"After so much humiliation, I was forced to look for an alternative path," Champai Soren had said, alleging that all his government programmes in the first week of July were abruptly cancelled by the party leadership without his knowledge.