Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren has won the trust vote in Jharkhand assembly with a comfortable majority of 45 MLAs voting in his favor.
He was sworn in last week after getting released on bail in money laundering charges in connection with an alleged land racket in the state.
“Today is July 4. On Jan 31, from the same place, I conveyed a message to you all on how the opposition has conspired against me. They were successful. For five months, they tried to keep me inside the jail by different means. We took the legal path, and people supported us,” Soren was quoted as saying before taking the oath ceremony.
The Chief Minister is now expected to expand his Cabinet.
The JMM alliance currently has 45 MLAs – 27 from JMM, 17 from Congress, and one from RJD – in the 81-member Jharkhand assembly.
The opposition BJP has a total of 24 MLAs.
The current strength of the 81-member Jharkhand assembly is 76 as after the Lok Sabha elections, several MLAs became MPs and some were expelled.
This reduced the half-way mark to 38 in the state assembly.
Soren was sworn in as Jharkhand chief minister on July 4, a day after Champai stepped down from the post months ahead of the assembly election.
Hemant Soren was the second chief minister who got arrested barely months before the Lok Sabha elections on January 31.
Before his arrest, he resigned as the chief minister and passed on the baton to Champai Soren.
Champai is a loyalist of Hemant and also had been a close associate of Shibu Soren, father of Hemant Soren.
JMM, won three Lok Sabha seats – two more than its tally in 2019, while he was in jail.
JMM fought the Jharkhand assembly elections in alliance with the Congress and RJD in 2019 and got a comfortable majority with forty-seven seats in the 81-member house.
